"-v;>^ ^^\^ 

















'-1 - ^.j^j^/;,^ -: '. 






'^ wr 





Class P5 3 5 2 ,^ 
Book_iEj51n7 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



ANALYSIS OF LIFE 



OR 



EDITORIALS 



BY 



JOHN L. MEANY 



COPYRIGHTED 19n 



5 Ay 



INTRODUCTION 

It has given me pleasure to read a number cf the edi- 
torial essays which constitute the text of this volume. 
They evidence broad culture and a familiarity with im- 
portant themes which far transcend in interest the prob- 
lems that rise to confront us in the course of current every- 
day life. 

They deal in the main with questions which concern 
the higher aspirations of men, without being tainted with 
that destructive spirit of utilitarianism and materialism 
which seeks to reduce every human proposition to a physi- 
cal equation. When the author touches an instant subject 
he shows a most accurate conception of the question 
involved; and in every instance his conclusions are de- 
ducted from a sound, consistent treatment of the premises 
and ideas advanced. The reciprocal obligations of the 
judge and lawyer in his story of the "Bench and Bar," 
depict with clearness the two most important agencies 
known to us in the administration of justice. 

Whoever, as author or editorial writer, calls attention 
to those matters, which disconnected from commer- 
<^ialism affect the higher interests of society, renders a 
public service; and this service Mr. Meany has well per- 
formed. It is not necessary that assent to or endorsement 
of every argument made cr conclusion reached by the 
writer should be given, and I do not mean to be under- 
stood as doing so; but it is but just to say that every argu- 
ment is fairly and forcibly stated in the editorial essays of 
this work, and the whole trend of every subject dealt with 
is in the direction cf the betterment of human conception 
as viewed from the standpoint of an educated and intelli- 
gent observer. 

NORMAN G. KITTRELL, 
Judge of the Sixty-first Judicial District of Texas. 



©CI.A289607 



AN ANALYSIS OP LIFE. 

Wealth and education are the two main avenues 
through which man soars to the heights of public 
and social influence. He who possesses neither is 
scarcely ever recognized, even though he may have 
other very valuable assets. A person then, having 
any ambition to become favorably known, should 
endeavor to have one or both of these two essential 
advantages in life. To desire one or both is not 
enough. Effort must be made, and persistently kept 
in action during the entire struggle of the individual 
effort. But the amount of money or education needed 
in this accomplishment can be neither figured nor 
imagined in the general conception of any one per- 
son. Ambition, alone, must do this in proportion to 
the measure of each one's anxiety. Some men, though 
anxious to be rich, do not care to be too rich; while 
others have no limit to the measure of their ambition 
in this respect. In like manner, there are men in 
the literary fields of life, who, though anxious to be 
scholarly, are only desirous of becoming proficient 
in their own special literary pursuits, while there 
are others who are attempting daily to learn things 
that can never be known. 

This is human nature in its diversity of environ- 
ment. All men were conceived and born as the au- 
thor of all things decreed; but all men do not pos- 
sess the propensities of feeling that natural instinct 
would alike have given them if they were born in 
the same sphere and bred in the same manner. As 
water flowing from the same fountain has the same 
ingredients in all its particles as it emits itself into 



4 EDITORIALS OF 

motion, so did human nature have the same anxiety 
in every thought of Adam and Eve. But as the water 
undergoes chemical changes on the bed of its natural 
activity, so do human feelings undergo natural 
changes peculiar to the sphere in which each one is 
bred and matured. 

It is then as natural for man to differ from his 
fellowman in the anxiety of ambition as it is for par- 
ticles of water to differ from one another in the 
stream of their existence. In fact, as all the organic 
and mineral things of the world undergo the changes 
peculiar to the laws that govern them, severely, so 
does the human mind become subject to the touch 
of the laws that govern breeding and environment. 
And in this respect it can be said that if the am- 
bitions of all men were alike there would hardly 
be any noticeable distinction of race, people or fam- 
ilies; and the world would be a thing without a bot- 
tom, middle or top, existing in a dead atmosphere 
without a living aim. The fact, then, that there are 
some men who desire to become enormously rich 
and others who try to become exceedingly wise, may 
not be so great a misfortune to the world as many 
people think. Yet, it must not be here said that 
those classes of over-ambitious people are leading the 
best kind of lives for their own happiness. Neither 
must it be said that the Avorld would be better and wiser 
withjout them. But it can be asserted with much 
confidence that they are very much alike the man 
who is always eating too much and still anxious to 
eat more. 

Here the question presents itself as to whether 
it is a greater fault to be over-greedy in the desire 
of acquiring wealth and wisdom or too indolent in 
the getting of either. 



JOHN L. MEANY O 

The answer J however, conies of itself: Out of 
nothing can come nothing; while from much, much 
is always expected. 

Summing up the whole as a matter of thought, 
men in pursuit of riches and wisdom should neither be 
considered an evil to the world nor to the community 
in which they live, because they inspire others to 
move in their footsteps to some extent, if not en- 
tirely. And though this inspiration is not always 
the best whispers of human ambition, it is neverthe- 
less the motive power that moves the commercial 
and social wheels of life. 

As has been already said, a man must be either 
rich or educated before he can take his seat in the 
world at any station of notice. But this question 
is different when we consider life from a moral 
standpoint. Riches and education are not calculated 
to bring the soul nearer to God. The greater per- 
centage of the human family are limited in means 
and, in many instances, entirely void of the higher 
literary culture which the scholar enjoys. Yet, 
within themselves, a large percentage of this class 
have a happiness that the world can not take away. 
Social anticipation gives them neither the imaginary 
pleasure nor the painful feelings of discontent and 
worry that generally come to those who make social 
greatness the god of their happiness. They are sat- 
isfied with the peace of mind they enjoy in being 
permitted to live for and with their families. An 
opportunity to make all ends meet, financially, is 
all they seek; and to know one another rightly is 
all the literature they care to read. For what they 
have and have not, they are always willing to thank 
God with hearts that are sincere. The world is 
to them, as it should be to all, a place to work and 



6 EDITORIALS OF 

live in the fear and love of Him with whom they 
hope to be in a happier hereafter. 

With some of the rich and wise it is often dif- 
ferent. Such of them as may be here considered 
think of God as a matter of custom, and of them- 
selves in the most serious matter-of-fact way. We 
have, however, among the rich and educated another 
class of men and women who dispose of their wealth 
and education so usefully as to be pleasing to the 
world and to themselves. Instead of piling their 
gold into vaults, banks and pots buried in the ground, 
they put it into useful circulation, and love it only 
for the good it may do. In the same manner those 
of this class who are gifted and educated enlighten 
the world within the sphere of their reach without 
submitting themselves to imagine that they are gods 
of wisdom in the display of their earthly knowledge. 

In summing up this argument at this point it may 
be said that it is not only advisable to become rich 
and learned, but rather highly commendable in any 
man to have the ambition of becoming so. With 
this ambition the wealth and civilization of the past 
has been made, and with it the wealth and civiliza- 
tion of the future can be promulgated and main- 
tained. But in the future, as in the past, ambition 
will be largely inspired by necessity. Boulevards, 
factories, ocean boats and steamships have peeped 
into the commercial vision of man from the breast 
of necessity. There was a time when the human 
mind had no conception of electricity, steam power 
or navigation. Today they are as familiarly used 
and handled as if they had been naturally and prac- 
tically known to man from the beginning of the 
world. It was necessity, of course, that shaped their 
usefulness; but it was money, education and genius 



JOHN L. MEANY / 

that brought them into existence upon the back of 
ambition. 

In view of the self-evident truth of this assertion, 
it must be admitted that the lazy, self-satisfied pray- 
ing people of the world would have never attempted 
to do anything that would disturb the sleeping 
energies of their peaceful, happy manner of living. 
And, hence, but for ambition, necessity would be 
still sleeping on the hard bed of painful regret. True, 
indeed, that preachers, pious people and self-satisfied 
souls, are much needed to make up the moral glory 
of life; but without the wheels of money and genius 
the commercial world would not move fast enough 
to meet the daily needs of men. 

This being true, the inactive population of the 
world should not be jealous of those who become rich 
and great. On the contrary, men of wealth and 
genius should be praised, encouraged and appreciated 
as people destined from the beginning to do that 
which they have done and are doing for their fellow- 
men. 

In like manner, young men of ambition should 
not be harassed by the tongue of envy and slander. 
Any word, move or deed that impedes progress on 
its way to financial or literary success is a menace 
to society and a detriment to the better end of the 
nobler aim. For, as the perfection of piety and 
moral achievement belongs to the preacher's earnest 
determination, so does the perfection of commercial 
progress depend upon the energy of the rich and 
learned. Yet we hear from time to time the sneering 
voice of some indolent fool casting insinuations of 
disrespect upon the conduct of some industrious, 
educated and intelligent young man. And for no 
reason except the reason of begrudging people they 



8 EDITORIALS OF 

know the pleasure of being more prosperous, or as 
prosperous, as they may be themselves. 

But such is the diversity and selfishness of the 
human makeup. One man plows the field to win 
for his home and family bread and a bed to sleep ; 
another gives his life to some commercial vocation 
selected by him to pursue, while, from either neces- 
sity or through ambition, others devote themselves 
to the building of nations and to the shaping, mak- 
ing and promulgation of the finer arts on the re- 
fined and more artistic side of life. 

Into so many classes and into many times more 
is the world divided. And so divided, not because 
men plotted and planned to the divisions of this kind 
made, but because divine Providence gave the dividend 
and necessity found the divisor, and all men together 
make up the quotient, whether differently or alike 
carved out, either by fortune or by personal ener- 
gies. Or in better and more accurate words, every 
one of us, outside of that which fortune gave, has 
made the life, name and position that ambition has 
given in the distribution of its own peculiar action. 
But, as already referred to, environment, or the local 
influences of cause, make up in part if not in whole 
the merit or demerit of individual career, subject, 
however, to two causes that never manifest them- 
selves nakedly to the mortal vision of man. One of 
these is the inherent perversity of instinct, ever pres- 
ent with the individual; the other, the continuous 
stream of grace naturally flowing from divine super- 
vision in rivulets of overflowing mercy, in and 
through the most perverted valleys of human thought. 
The first can only be destroyed by the latter. Good 
influences alone can overcome the evil that is in- 
herited by us. 



JOHN L. MEANY 9 

Here, however, comes a thought too much for man 
to shape into any definite conclusion. And in it 
the visible and invisible worlds appear in the mirror 
of 'the soul, but not in the spherical features which 
can be neither surveyed nor pictured by any effort 
of the intellect within the limited vision of imagina- 
tion. As the north pole commands the magnetic 
needle of the compass, so does divine grace move the 
feelings of man. But as the compass is affected 
by local influences that are inadvertently or directly 
mtercepting the magnetism of the pole, so is environ- 
ment in a similar measure interfering with the action 
of human feelings in their relation with God. 

This simile is, of course, inferior in the compara- 
tive degree of nature, because mortal observation 
is unable to form any idea of the things that are 
divine. 

In measuring human action within the lines of 
this effort the conclusions submitted are not asserted 
as infallible, but simply written with the hope of 
giving its readers some thoughts which may develop 
in them the true philosophy of life. The rich, the 
poor, the learned and the unlearned, are alike de- 
pendent on God. To have money is not to have all 
that the soul needs. Neither will the most finished 
education show us true happiness in the absence of 
divine light. But riches and education are necessary 
auxiliaries to the Creator ^s will in the management 
and distribution of human things. Lighted visions 
from the dim rays of misconception may sometimes 
lead us into the pathways of other thoughts; but 
the purely whispering inspirations of truth will never 
be too far from us to hear if we only desire to paint 
the right conception of life within the canvass of 
our souls. 



10 EDITORIALS OF 

Without being inconsistent with the conclusions 
here offered it may be said that all nature is so 
mysteriously constituted as to leave it impossible for 
human intelligence to make any attempt in solving 
the puzzle of life. From chemical analysis and 
through the deductions of natural philosophy, stim- 
ulated by the science of electricity, we are some- 
times able to see nature with a vision that is al- 
most divine. But in summing up the affairs of the 
soul we should go step by step through the scenes 
of moral glory without questioning the motive of God. 



LIMITED PERCEPTION. 

Since man is a creature of limited perception he 
should never try to survey the unlimited regions of 
divine thought. God lives by and in Himself; man 
from and in the life that God has given him. His 
thoughts begin at his first dawn of reason. Until 
then he is a creature of existence without perception. 
Day by day, thereafter, his imagination expands in 
proportion to his material opportunities and intel- 
lectual development. Beyond this, his percep- 
tion can not reach. The measure of his conception 
is, and must be confined to, the limits of his material 
knowledge. Place him where you may and he will 
never be able to trace origin beyond the sphere of 
material existence. If you ask him why the rose 
buds from its stem he will tell you that the stem has 
by its nature the power to bud the rose. But that 
which he calls nature in the stem is a mystery f.o 
him. To say that the spring and summer are, re- 
spectively, the seasons of vegetation and flowery life, 
would be only to tell what the histories .of these two 



JOHN L. ME ANY 11 

seasons teach. True, that natural philosophers give 
material causes for the bloom and placid beauty of 
summer, but they have yet to teach what puts into 
nature the aetion of cause. Even the great science of 
chemistry fails to disclose the nature of the process 
that teaches the chemist to know how many elements 
a certain compound may contain. The process itself 
is to him simple. He can very easily tell, not only 
the number of elements in the compound, but also 
the proportionate quantities of the body analyzed. 
Yet, he is unable to explain the analyzing power 
of the formula with which he works. Man, being 
thus unable to see the divinity which puts into action 
the philosophy of natural things, should not hesi- 
tate to say that he is less able to see the mysteries 
of God in the things that are divine. 

Yet, we have in the w^orld today, men and women 
who read, within the pages of deluded imagination, 
secrets that angels are not given to know. Fortune 
tellers disclose the future, spiritualists the secrets of 
the grave, and some ministers of the gospel, things 
which God Himself may not care to know until the 
day of judgment. The first are cunning, Avicked 
Avretches who rob the curious ; the second, people w^ho 
j)ermit themselves to imagine that they are mediums 
of divine invention ; and the third, light-brained min- 
isters who forget that God's word is simple and plain ; 
that the pulpit is not a stage, but a place from which 
the divine word should be preached without osten- 
tation and by lips which speak from a heart that is 
sincere ; that those who think they are holy should 
take heed, lest they become wicked; and, lastly, who 
forget that the gray matter in their heads is a good 
deal like that in the heads of those to whom they 
preach. 



12 EDITORIALS OF 



BENCH AND BAR. 

If the layman had a true conception of the bench 
and bar, litigants would have less trouble in persu- 
ing their legal rights. Unfortunately some people 
imagine that the judge and lawyer are susceptible to 
petty feelings in their discrimination between right 
and wrong. This is an error that can hardly be ever 
corrected in the general deduction of human thought 
within the mind of the uncultured layman. And this 
because his mind is unable to conceive the noble 
instincts that are inculcated in the heart through 
the judicial and professional practice of the law. No 
matter how a judge may feel toward a litigant in 
the case before him, he will never lose sight of the 
judgment he should render from the law and the 
facts. True, he may sometimes err, on account of 
being a creature of limited perception like every 
other mortal of the human race. But he is always 
ready to correct his mistakes when he sees them. In 
like manner, the lawyer will be true to his client, 
no matter how untrue his client may be to him. And 
though he may sometimes fail in judgment, and in 
legal knowledge, he will never go into court with- 
out believing he has a just cause, if he is a lawyer 
worthy of the license that gives him the right to rep- 
resent his fellowmen at the bar in a court of justice. 
In mental trouble, agitated through the machinerj^ 
of human acts, give me a lawyer before you send for 
a minister or a doctor. The minister and doctor are, 
however, in their respective places, needed in every 
sphere and walk of life ; but he who has in his mind 
and brain the trained skill and experience of an at- 
torney-at-law, is the onlv man who can serve vou 



JOHN L. MEANY 13 

when you have a legal right to determine. No 
stretch of imagination in the whirlwind of slander 
will be snecessfully able to deny this assertion. Its 
truth has maintained itself through every page of 
human philosophy. Intellectually surpassing, noble 
and fearless in every professional act, stands always 
the lawyer of honor. Without him the world would 
be yet imprisoned in the dungeons of ancient tyran- 
ny, with the weak kicked down by the strong before 
the throne of kings, who permitted their helpless 
subjects to be persecuted for and in the name of the 
God they hypocritically adored in prayer, while their 
words and acts cried to heaven for vengeance. 

This was the condition of man before the bench 
became the custodian of human rights, and this 
would be yet his condition, if narrow-minded con- 
ceit and monarchial tyranny had not been conquered 
by nobler thoughts, and by a more humane and bet- 
ter judgment. 

Our conclusions here drawn may not, however, be 
satisfactory to every reader unless we offer proof 
to sustain them. This is easy, because it will not take 
a Solomon to understand that the judge of a court 
of general jurisdiction is nearly always selected 
through the judgment of the lawyers who practice 
before the bench upon which he presides. In fact an 
attorne}^ must show some marked legal ability before 
his fellow practitioners will consider him as a can- 
didate for the bench. And above all, they must 
notice in him these pronounced instincts of stability, 
integrity and honor that show in him the qualities 
of a gentleman and a lawyer. Besides this, he is con- 
tinuously before them in the naked light of his 
judicial acts, without having a single place to hide 
himself from the most scrutinizing of the most intel- 



14 EDITORIALS OF 

lectual members of the bar who have already read, 
compared and digested thousands of opinions given 
by other judges upon questions which are daily 
decided by him. Like pure water made still more 
pure by chemical and refrigeratory processes, so is 
the mind of the judge made nobler, purer and more 
able through the watchfulness of the bar and through 
the judicial application and practice of his daily 
studies. 

The lawyer in like manner, but with a different 
view from a practical standpoint, becomes daily more- 
faithful and more proficient. Self -pride and the 
repeated confidence reposed in him brings him up, 
step by step, to the highest pinnacle of professional 
perfection. Then, when once up there, he faces every 
legal battle with a pride of honor and faithfulness 
that surpasses the patriotism of the soldier who is 
willing to give his life for his country. Nothing less 
emphasized than this could explain the fidelity, 
honor and feeling of an upright laAvyer. Think of 
him as you will, slander him as you may, but he will 
always remain true to his client. Yes, true, even 
when the client may be either plotting to betray, 
cheat or deceive him. 

This is our story of the bench and bar. This is our 
experience with, and our conception of, the judge 
and lawyer. 



THE CITIZEN, LIQUOR AND FANATICISM. 

The liquor problem is today the most important 
question of the Texas people. It has been discussed 
at various times the last half a century by able and 



JOHN L. MEANY 15 

sincere writers. But it seems that it is now as big a 
puzzle to some as it was when first brought into 
issue. This happens because we have too much agi- 
tation without the proper thought. People can not 
arrive at a sane conclusion of any discussion unless 
they begin to think rightly. To argue one-sidedly 
without reasoning, and with prejudice for or against 
any question, is simply making an agitation that 
will do no one any good, except those who make it 
their aim in life to profit from the troubles of others. 
And even they, w^ill, in the end, lose out, because 
the truth of any issue will sooner or later assert 
itself, no matter how ably it may be denied by the 
narrow-mindedness of the falsifier. 

Feeling our obligations in this respect to the read- 
ers of the Advocate, we believe that it will not be 
amiss to make this editorial longer than our usual 
ones. Yet we shall be careful not to extend our 
imagination beyond the reasonable endurance of the 
reader who has the sense and fairness of being will 
ing to submit himself to conviction if persuaded by 
fair arguments. 

With this view in mind, we shall open our discus- 
sion by advancing the main reasons of the great 
issue, namely, moral and commercial achievement, 
both in country and in city life. 

The preacher, in behalf of the prohibition party, 
says from the pulpit, and sometimes at the street 
corners, that the saloon is a menace to virtue and 
to social happiness. But the statesman, who has 
studied the affairs of his country with anxiety and 
with patriotism, will speak long and loudly against 
prohibition, because of the evil he sees resulting 
from it in states where the people made it a law 



16 EDITORIALS OF 

before they were able to see the impracticability of 
their act. 

Who is right or wrong, is a question for argu- 
ment; who is sincere in his efforts, is another thing. 
True, both men may be, in point of conviction, 
morally right; but in point of fact, only one of them 
can be logically correct. 

Those men who are inclined to be fair will neither 
question the sincerity of the preacher nor the hon- 
esty of the statesman. But they will, if they con- 
sider the matter at all, use their best judgment to 
learn who is right. And this, of course, is a duty 
which every citizen owes to himself and to his state. 

Now, we come to our editorial's highest summit of 
reasoning: Does the brewing of beer and the dis- 
tilling of liquor menace virtue and make homes un- 
happy? We think not. Yet it must here be said 
that the saloon, in its badly managed order, is an 
evil which should be suppressed, while on the other 
hand, it must be confessed that it is a commercial 
blessing Avhich should not only be maintained, but 
appreciated if properly managed. 

In writing thus, the reader will expect an argu- 
ment that will sustain every assertion we advance. 
This is easy, because the reasoning powers of any or- 
dinary mind can not help but perceive from the 
beginning that an ale house is not of itself an evil, 
and that everything in this world, whether in the 
abstract or tangible existence, had, and has, its origin 
from and in the divine conception that brought all 
creation out of nothing. 

If this is true, as naturally it must be, who will 
be so unreasonable as to urge that sitmulating bev- 
erages are of themselves an evil which must not be 
put on the market for sale as a commercial com- 



JOHN L. MEANY 17 

modity? At least, we do not fear that any fair- 
minded, sane man will make an issue with us on this 
point. But in the distributable and particular 
division of this question, it is quite different, be- 
cause every commodity has its own peculiar meas- 
ure of value in the proportionate application of its 
regular powers in the formula that takes from any 
or all of the remaining whole its needed attribute of 
usefulness. The people then should put by their votes 
into the different cities and villages of Texas, just 
enough of beer and liquor to meet the natural needs 
of the people. And by doing this, they will give 
to the citizens of their state, just what they want 
without deteriorating in the least from the social and 
general morals of the Texas people. But let them 
take what we ask them to give, and they will not 
only impair the commercial facilities of the people, 
but they will, also, lower the social standard of citi- 
zenship. We make this assertion with some timidity, 
because we know that it is almost impossible to de- 
duct from the general, an answer which should be 
specially premised before absolutely made. Moral 
conception, whether in the advance or in the decline, 
is in the abstract, a normal condition of the human 
mind, and measured generally by the enchantment 
of daily environments. For instance, if a young man 
will continue to associate himself with boys who will 
not conduct themselves properly, he will, sooner or 
later, become more or less susceptible to conduct him- 
self as they do. In like manner, if the same young 
man will begin his early life with associates who will 
speak and act with the taste and politeness of gentle- 
men, he will, himself, in time, even though he may be 
of a rougher nature than they, learn to speak and act 
like them. 



18 EDITORIALS OF 

As the young man has been taken from class to 
class in this diagram, so will every citizen of our 
state find himself, from time to time, either unex- 
pectedly or by intention, associated with people who 
may or may not be helpful to him in shaping his 
character beneficially to his future career. 

If we will take ourselves, with this self -evidently 
deducted conclusion to any of the dry cities of Texas, 
we will immediately begin to see the difference be- 
tween it and the prosperous cities where fanaticism 
has not yet made its inroads into the minds of the 
majority of the voters. At first sight, we shall have 
no difficulty in perceiving that the tone of pros- 
perity is fast fading away from the energy of its 
citizens. Here, and there, the eyes of the visitor 
will have but very little difficulty in noticing, 
placarded, everywhere throughout its main streets 
and byways, ''houses for rent." At every street cor- 
ner, some old attaches are disreputably lounging, and 
almost begging for w^ork and money. But worse 
still, to go into the back alleys and see the blind 
tiger hiding to devour its victims with poisonous 
doses of its own manufacture. In this last view, it 
is doubly deplorable to see the law sleeping in the 
bosom of its own forgotten watchfulness, and the boys 
of eighteen and twenty, staggering to their homes, 
with rough words in their lips, and with envy in 
their hearts. This happens because it will never be- 
come possible for any person or people to stem the 
natural and persistent tide of legitimate and heridi- 
tary appetites. So long as man lives, so long will 
he have, in spite of every invasion of his rights, those 
things Avhich w^ere put into the world for him. 

Hence the blind tiger, with its self-made poisonous 
imitation, supercedes respectable ale houses which 



JOHN L. MEANY 19 

used to give happy, pleasant hours, and wishful, 
needed stimulants, to those whose pleasure it was to 
mingle and mix, where, according to social habits, 
the young and old, alike, would meet and talk, with 
the man who served them over the counter often, if 
not always, as much a gentleman as any other citizen 
of the state. 

But perhaps the preacher and other leaders of 
the prohibition party do not understand the great 
injury their efforts might do to the farmers and 
business men, generally, if they should succeed in 
making the voters of Texas believe that the perma- 
nent sale of liquor is a menace to society and an evil 
to the wives and homes of the land. In fact, we 
believe that they have not studied the question in 
this respect. For if they had, we are nearly sure that 
this agitation would not have been brought into so 
unreasonable an issiie. And we say this because we 
can not begin to think that pious ministers of any 
church would, in so absolute a manner, be so ve- 
hemently attempting to destroy an industry that is, 
in a very great measure, a most invigorating portion 
of the life blood of their state. At present the farm- 
ers of Texas are annually selling to their home brew- 
eries for brewing purposes over 25,000,000 pounds of 
rice and about 1,000,000 bushels of grain. Take this 
item of industry away from the farmers of a state 
like Texas, with only a population little more than 
4,000,000 people, and you will not only make them 
feel there is a panic, but you wdll also make them, 
within a few years, as poor and as poverty-stricken 
as those of Louisiana who were, before the foolish- 
ness of the prohibition craze, as happy and as well 
fixed as were the farmers of any other state of our 
Union. 



20 EDITORIALS OF 

But this is not all. Between the breweries and 
liquor dealers of our state, we have nearly 25,000 able- 
bodied men at work. If prohibition should happen 
to cloud the skies of Texas with its ungodly misty 
waters, w^hat would become of this body of 25,000 
men? Perhaps the leaders of the prohibition party 
will tell us that they should go into the fields and 
grow rice and corn for a market that is already 
depreciated by reason of the very act that puts those 
men out of homes and out of work. 

This won't do. They must suggest some other oc- 
cupation for men who must make a living at some- 
thing. But some of those leaders are long-winded 
and may preach unto those men that they could be- 
come painters, carpenters, blacksmiths, tinners, well 
diggers, bootblacks, merchants, doctors and lawyers. 
This suggestion is equally as unphilosophical as the 
other, because Texas has already an ample sufficiency 
of these various classes of people. So there is 
scarcely any other vocation for them to suggest but 
that of preaching. And heaven knows that this field 
is already more than sufficiently worked. The college 
man, in the pulpit has, in many instances, been long 
since superceded by ignoramuses who are, by their un- 
godly conceit, persuaded to tell the people that the 
word of God is in their lips, through and by an inspi- 
ration divinely telling them that they are purely and 
specially servants of God, ordained for the purpose 
of driving out of the state, and even out of the 
world, the most heinous evil known to them, namely, 
the licensed sale of beer and whiskey. 

Now, having nearly exhausted the entire legitimate 
vocabularly of vocations, we are persuaded to believe 
that the leaders of the dry sided part of this issue 
are willing to concede that liquor in the commercial 



JOHN L. ME ANY 21 

world was, at the beginning, contemplated in the 
divine mind just as much as any other feature of 
industry known to man. To them we hope it will 
appear, as it does to us, that each man is in his heart 
the measure of his value to God; and that he who 
strikes his breast in exaltation of his own merits 
should recall the parable of the Pharisee in the Gospel 
before he would condemn either the business or the 
acts of his fellowman. 

AVe now pass from the facts advanced, pro and 
con, into those one-sidedly asserted by the leaders 
of the prohibition party. They tell us that liquor 
is the stimulant evil of the nation, and premise them- 
selves by saying that ninety per cent of the poverty 
of the land is attributable to it; that the women 
of our country are driven to a sphere of unhappi- 
ness and destitution, because of this great evil. But 
all this they say, in the shape of an assertion, with- 
out giving arguments or reasons that would back up 
their conclusions. To say a thing does not make 
the saying true. Who will be so susceptible as to 
believe that this great nation is a poverty-stricken 
land? To be sure, we meet with stringencies which 
make us feel the depression of the times. But how 
can the preacher attribute spasmodic depressions to 
the steady sale of beer and liquor ? And this we ask, 
notwithstanding that one Reverend George Stuart 
said repeatedly in his sermon at Atlanta, Georgia, that 
it is the liquor traffic, and not tariff, trusts or na- 
tional banks, that bring stringency into the land. 
And in support of this asserted proposition, he said, 
without a single premise of reasoning, that there is 
just a little over 1,200,000,000 of money in the United 
States, and that the nation could move along smoothly 
if every cent of that money was put out of circula- 



22 EDITORIALS OF 

tion and buried in one hole. And he adds in the same 
breath that the American people pay a great deal 
more than that much money, annually, for drinks. 

How foolish and how inconsistent ! What in the 
world would we do if we had no money in circula- 
tion ? And how in this world could any people spend 
more money than they have? 

But this is a good deal like all of the other un- 
reasonable asserted sayings quoted to have been ut- 
tered by this reverend gentleman in that famous ser- 
mon of his, at Atlanta. 

It is indeed strange that so learned a man would 
be so devoid of every sense of justice in a matter so 
important to the entire nation. Imagine that a man 
of letters, and of the church, would preach to his 
fellowmen a doctrine which is not only inconsistent 
with the theory of things, but incoherent in its ill- 
founded premises of non-logical conclusions. 

For how can a man say with any reasonable hope 
of being credited, ''It seemed to me that the cracking 
of the glass beneath my feet at Weatherford was but 
a prophecy of the day when the American people 
will dash the saloon to the earth and tramp it back 
to the hell from which it came." 

This idea of endeavoring to make intelligent 
American people believe that the saloons came from 
hell is preposterous in conception and idly idiotic in 
expression. Ninety per cent of the brewers, distillers 
and liquor men of the nation are gentlemen of a 
very high moral and social standing — prominent in 
the state and pious in the church — supporting the 
preacher and relieving the poor, as well as being gen- 
erally instrumental in bringing about conditions of 
financial success which would never have been ef- 
fected if such men as thev had lost their existence 



JOHN L. MEANY 23 

on earth. And yet Mr. Stuart would have us be- 
lieve that these gentlemen are agents of the devil, 
importing from the bowels of hell, beer and liquor 
for the saloons. 

This is too much in the order of Pagan philosophy 
— Saloons coming from hell and those w^ho make beer 
and whiske}^, agents "of the devil ! The gentleman 
may as well say that God gave the earth the natural 
productive power to grow rice and other things for 
the purpose of aiding the devil in building resorts 
peculiar to his own pleasures from one end of the 
world to the other. 

But perhaps the preacher of prohibition is getting 
tired of God/s way of doing things, and may be 
able to succeed later in making Old Mother Earth 
grow, instead of rice and corn, some other kind of 
grain that will not permit itself to ferment into 
either whiskey or beer. Or perhaps he may be. by 
his prayers, able to induce God to take from man 
the formula which gives to beer and whiskey the 
peculiar taste, strength and liquor-charm, that makes 
some men feel how necessary it sometimes is, to take 
a little of them for the stomach's sake. In this, how- 
ever, he is not very likely to succeed, because it has 
been written that God is a divine being who never 
listens to selfish prayers put into lips by inspirations 
born of whimsical insanity. 

But again to cold facts, because we have yet to 
fear that the resourceful preacher of prohibition 
might say that the farmers of Texas could sell their 
rice and corn in other states of the Union. But if 
it is well to have prohibition in Texas, who can argue 
that it is not well to have it in other states? And 
if prohibition is in other states, or in all of the 
states of the nation, where would we, here in T(^xas, 



24 EDITORIALS OF 

get a market for our rice and corn, now consumed 
by the breweries at our own fireside? The answer 
must natural]}" be, '^No place.'' And worse still, if 
prohibition should reign every place, there would be 
no market in any place for the rice and com now 
consumed by all the states in the manufacture of 
beer and whiskey — the non-consumption of which 
would mean, to the farmers of the United States, an- 
nually, the loss of a market for 3,800,000,000 pounds 
of rice and for over 100,000,000 bushels of corn. 

DavcU for a minute on these figures and you will 
get sick and tired of listening to the prohibition 
preacher. And while you are thinking thus, consider 
also the 2,000,000 of men who would be put out 
of employment within the walls of the United States, 
if the prohibition craze should become the insanity 
of all. 

Now to the ideas of great men upon this question. 
Caesar, in the Latin tongue, called wine the sooth- 
ing syrup of the tired soldier; Napoleon exhorted 
his Cossacks, in the French vernacular, to moderately 
administer to their stomachs some stimulant in time 
of worry ; and our immortal Washington, in the 
American language, did not hesitate to tell his lieu- 
tenant, on one occasion, to keep a little of the best 
whiskey always in his tent. 

On the other hand, Richard III, of England, re- 
duced the rank of some soldiers of the Royal Guard, 
because whiskey was found in their possession. 
Catherine, of Russia, had two of her best castle guards 
transported to Siberia, because of being found drink- 
ing some of the Russian national drink on the birth- 
day of the Queen. And more co-incidental still: the 
never forgotten wicked Nero, in one of his hypocriti- 
cal spells, suspended the use of wine in his palace, 



JOHN L. MEANY 25 

some few years before he died, for a period of sixty- 
two hours. 

Here the reader who draws the line between the 
daring courage and noble standing of Caesar, Na- 
poleon and Washington, to separate them from the 
cowardly, murderous and dissipated Richard, Cath- 
erine and Nero, will readily begin to think that some 
people who favor the use of liquor are, in many 
instances, much more noble and virtuous than many 
of those who sometimes condemn it with a vengeance 
which would make some easy minds believe they are 
saints. 

Preachers are, however, a much needed class, and 
should be listened to whenever they preach the gospel 
in the purity of its doctrine. But they should not 
be permitted to rule the people in secular affairs, 
contrary to the w^elfare of the citizens. And for 
politeness sake, if for nothing else, they ought to 
slack up in preaching to their congregations things 
that are inconsistent with every philosophical idea 
of good government, and deadly dangerous, in many 
instances, to the peace and prosperity of the nation. 

In conclusion to this editorial we would like to add, 
as a matter of justice and pure reasoning, that the 
saloon should be regulated in America as it is in 
other countries of the world. In Germany, Spain, 
Prance, England, Italy, Holland, Switzerland, Aus- 
tria, Belgium and Sweden the applicant for a license 
must be a man of first-class reputation and of the 
best moral character, fitted in every respect to mix 
socially with the best people of the land. 

As it is in these countries, so should it be here; 
and so it will be when our legislatures and officers 
of the law will come to the proper sense of their 
dutv. 



26 EDITORIALS OF 

Then, when this governmental purity is effected, 
the preacher and the citizen will be alike satisfied, 
and the natural time, long drink will be sold without 
a murmur from either home or pulpit. Even those 
interested in the making of this commodity will thank 
God for having the question settled satisfactorily at 
last. And it might be added that they are possibly 
more anxious than the preacher to have this reform 
made. 

But until this is done, a certain portion of the 
world will cry out for prohibition without effecting 
anything, save a useless agitation that will always 
end in discontent. 



THE DEPENDENT RELATIONS OF MEN. 

Creation in its visible features is a combination of 
mutual activities. The human family, as a whole, is 
composed uniformly of individual dependence. 
Every man, woman and child of the human family, 
is in some measure naturally dependent on, or a help- 
mate to, some other person or persons of mankind; 
and the universe, in its distribution of variety, is 
the common province for the united existence of all. 
The sun, the moon and the stars, together with the 
atmosphere in its compound of numerous ingredients, 
shines and falls upon the earth for the benefit of 
him whom the Creator called Man. The monarch 
who rules has no greater right than the subject he 
governs in the natural division of things. Circum- 
stances and human efforts, will of course, divide the 
whole by the pencil of fortune upon the map of 
earthly existence. And this, without argument. 



JOHN L. MEANY Zi 

is in many instances meet and just. It is other- 
wise, when the happiness of life is wrongfully 
given to some in exclusion of others. Here, however, 
it will not be understood that human happiness and 
human influence should be equally divided. On the 
contrary, it must be admitted that such a division 
would not only be impracticable, but also contrary 
to the laws of progress and civilization. 

Just as men should differ in ideas in order to 
get sound conclusions, so will the unequal divisions 
of happiness and wealth measure their value to com- 
mon existence in sympathies that play the moral ac- 
tivities of human thought. 

With this understanding, we proceed to reason the 
daily relations of man with man. The farmer is the 
first in the eye of deception. Those who want to 
buy his product are nearly one and all using every 
effort to purchase from him as cheap as possible, 
without caring in the least whether or not he reaps 
from the harvest of his efforts, sufficient compen- 
sation for his labor. The wage earner in his demand 
for better pay and less hours, is looked upon by his 
employer as a creature who ought to be oppressed 
rather than encouraged. And the merchant who 
opens his store to supply his patrons with the neces- 
saries they need in his line of business, is often looked 
upon as a man who should sell his goods for the ac- 
commodation of his customers and without showing 
any anxiety to consider his own interest. The manu- 
facturer in like manner has his own troubles. Many 
believe that he is not only a menace to society, but 
also an evil to industry. Yet, these different classes 
of men are so closely united by the dictates of com- 
mon need, as to make it impossible for either one 
to live commercially without either one or more 



28 EDITORIALS OF 

of the men pursuing the vocations here grouped. 
In every community, there must be merchants, 
and these merchants must be esteemed rather 
than despised. In like manner, the merchant must 
have patronage and in turn he should be anxious 
about the welfare of the people who visit his store. 
As he is useful to the customer, so is the customer 
useful to him. And in this, it may be said that the 
wage earner is much more than one-half the com- 
mercial percentage of value. He spends every dol- 
lar he earns to buy the necessaries of life for himself 
and his family. Without him, the merchant would 
be indeed poor. And this would be true, even though 
he depended, and could depend, for a living upon 
the patronage of people who were not wage earners. 
This last assertion is apt to be disputed, because there 
are some people who may be too blind to see that 
no one would ha e any money to buy anything if 
the hand of labor should fall from the tree of life. 
For then the manufacturer, the high-toned citizen 
and the thin-haired aristocrat would starve as well 
as the merchant. Yet, notwithstanding this, there 
are in many towns and cities of our nation some 
people who ally themselves together for the purpose 
of crushing the hand that gives them nearly every 
happiness they enjoy. 

This is the foolishness of human conception in the 
mind of the man who has his head swelled and his 
heart hardened against the welfare of a fellowman 
who never did him any harm, except to earn his bread 
by the sweat of his brow. 

In the same manner, we often find some laboring 
people who believe it is wrong to be rich and who 
would, if they could, depreciate the commercial value 
of the rich man's business. This spirit is, of course. 



JOHN L. MEANY 29 

limited to classes composed of men who have little 
or no brain, because it is hard to think that any man 
of sound mind would or could wish the poverty of 
another; and especially if his existence would in any 
way be dependent upon the man whom he would 
wish to see poor. 

Those of the latter class are, however, few when 
compared with the great number of the former. It 
can scarcely be said that there is one per cent of the 
laboring class in this way disposed to the rich man, 
while, on the other hand, there are quite a number 
of rich men who are daily plotting and planning 
how they might with impunity take from the king- 
dom of labor the imperial crown of unity : A crown 
which has once in the past saved for man the peace 
of nations and which will in the near future save 
the world from the butchery of war. Germany and 
England have said ''No," because^ the men behind 
the guns were brothers; and as these two nations 
have said, so will other nations say when the brother- 
hood of union labor will draw the sword of peace. 

If the facts here stated "are true, as apparently they 
are, there is hardly any need in saying that some- 
thing ought to be done in every walk of life in order 
that the eyes of men may begin to see how useful 
the entire world are individually to one another and 
how little and useless any man, or any set of men, 
would be, if he or they would be isolated from the 
rest of mankind. 



30 EDITORIALS OF 



WEARING THE WRONG CLOTHES. 

'^Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, 
and to God the things that are God's." 

These words of the Saviour to those who were try- 
ing to entrap him, speak the reproach of their mean- 
ing to the preacher who meddles in secular affairs. 
The world is the kingdom of man, and he has ab- 
solute dominion over everything placed thereon. The 
beast, the fish, the vegetable and all the mineral 
product of the earth, are by natural inheritance his 
unquestioned property. But he, himself, is the only 
thing or creature placed or living on earth that can 
give glory to God. Life, then, is the only province 
of God's pleasure in the action of man; and in the 
action of man, only, is the Creator honored. 

True, the world has in every feature of its mineral 
and vegetable kingdoms, some evidence of the ma- 
terial value which God has placed in every existing 
thing, yet it is only the heart and lips of man which 
can feel and speak with holy 'thoughts the gifts of 
divine Creation. 

This, of course, is man in the purity of his natural 
existence. But follow him into the dejected vicis- 
situdes of perverted nature and he will appear to the 
eyes of pure thought in a vision that shows him con- 
demned within the sphere of his own wickedness. 

In this last thought the preacher's aim in life 
should begin and end. The world, in its commercial 
activity is no part of his mission. To preach the 
gospel from the pulpit of his calling should be his 
only aim in life. What other men do in the daily 
pursuits of their different trades, is no part of a 
minister's business. At best, he is a beggar at the 



JOHN L. MEANY 31 

door of his fellowman, asking, because of the coat 
he wears, the necessaries of life in the name of the 
God he professes to serve. This, indeed, is com- 
mendable in the pious minister who gives himself 
entirely to his calling. But it is otherwise with the 
preacher who tries to make the world believe that 
he is a minister of God while his soul is seeking honor 
and glory in the estimation of men ; and while his 
tongue is engaged in denouncing the acts and deeds 
of hardworking people who are trying to make it 
possible for him to live at the door of their charity. 
Hear a minister preaching commercialism instead of 
the text of his calling and giving to Caesar the things 
that are of God and to God the things of Caesar, 
and you will be satisfied that the preacher who med- 
dles with the natural rights of man in the daily pur- 
suits of his common career, is a menace to the com- 
mercial progress of the community in which he lives 
and a disturber of human happiness in the com- 
mercial and political relations of man with man. 

This is not written with the view of placing any 
preacher in the wrong light, but it is written for the 
purpose of telling the meddling minister that he is 
Avearing the wrong coat, as well as lessening to some 
extent the usefulness of the man who preaches the 
gospel in the fear and love of God, and who has no 
other aim in life but the salvation of the souls com- 
mitted to his care. The world outside of this, is to 
him a place in which he once was and to which he 
should never wish to return. Those whom he ]eft 
there are individually pursuino- the vocation allotted 
for each. To them the world has a value peculiar to 
their different anxieties and the meddling minister 
should not be permitted to play any part in their 
affairs. When the Saviour said, '^Give unto Caesar the 



32 EDITORIALS OF 

things that are Caesar 's, " it is evident that the world 
was created for the pleasure of man. But when the 
Saviour added ''Give unto God the things that are 
God's," it is also evident that the souls of men are 
the only trophies worthy of divine consideration. 

From the conclusion here drawn, the readers of 
this editorial will permit us to say that the preacher 
should absolutely stay within the sphere of his call- 
ing and quit meddling with men in things that per- 
tain to their own commercial interest. 



WHY DON'T YOUNG MEN MARRY? 

"Why don't young men marry" is now a very un- 
settled question. Some say that the cause should be 
attributed to extravagance, while others maintain that 
the ladies are to blame. Neither contention is, in our 
opinion, right. The percentage of unmarried men is 
greatly on the side of those who could very con- 
veniently maintain homes, without missing the ex- 
pense, and it must be conceded that the greater per- 
centage of women over twenty are willing to wed if 
they are properly suited. Fifty years ago nearly 
one-half of the population of the United States over 
twenty were married. Today, there is more than 
seventy per cent over that age living a single life. 
This deterioration of the marriage progress in the 
human family is a condition which should immedi- 
ately appeal to the American people. ''Husband and 
wife" is the expression used when we refer to the 
world within the sphere of moral thought ; ' ' lovers, ' ' 
when we speak of people who may or may not care 
to be married. In either sense woman should be 



JOHN L. MEANY 33 

maji's fascination in every step and turn of his life. 
She was made for him, and he should live for her. 
No argument can controvert this assertion. It is as 
old as man and as lasting as God Himself Time can 
neither change nor dim nature's intendment in the 
human heart. Men may travel through life with light 
thoughts and with evil designs, but they will never 
be happy until they begin to love woman as God in- 
tended they should. As the child will fly from its 
father's anger to the mother who will always forgive, 
so will man turn from the troubles of the world to 
the woman of his heart for peace, happiness and love. 
Why, then, are there so many men and women liv- 
ing single lives? The answer is easy. If woman had 
still kept herself the charm of man's fascination as 
she did in the days of her bashful reservedness, she 
would be now sought in marriage with as much earn- 
estness as she was then. True, she is yet man's first 
thought and his last ambition, but she has long since 
lost the charm that made her supreme in the estima- 
tion of men. The bashful protest that kept her in 
days gone by from mingling in the activities of life 
is now lost in the ambition of the new woman who 
is trying to move the world, not ''by the hand that 
rocked the cradle," in the days when the babe was 
the pride of woman's love, but by taking her place 
among men in the field of commercial activit}^ 
Woman was not made to work, neither was she made 
to rule. But she was given a heart within which 
should always live a mother's hope and a husband's 
love. Fashion, beauty and a knowledge of her own 
worth was and ever must be hers, but the desire of 
self-independence should never be her ambition. In 
this desire she loses the power that makes man timid 
and respectful in her presence. When she remains 



34 EDITORIALS OF 

within the sphere of her own timidity, man will cpn- 
tinne to give her the sweetest conceptions of his ad- 
miration, but as soon as she permits herself to out-step 
the limits of feminine endurance, the charm that 
brought man to the shrine of her love is vanished for- 
ever from the vision of his first fascination. As re- 
peated welcome will gradually make the unworthy 
visitor bold, so will a continuous familiarity lessen 
woman's fascination for men. 

There is yet another reason why young men do not 
marry. In the visions of anticipation, man is much 
more observant than woman. Girls of eighteen and 
twenty seldom appreciate the real value of the heart. 
All they care for is to have it, for the time being, 
entirely to themselves. It is different with men. 
They, as a rule, look into the heart, not from curi- 
osity, but for the purpose of learning if a wife's love 
could permanently live there. And so soon as a man 
thinks it would, he begins trying to make that heart 
his own. And this he does, not because he wishes to 
see some girl in love with him, but because he is 
anxious to win a heart that will love him through 
married life. Debutantes and visiting ladies from 
other cities or places have no longer any fascination 
for him. He now seeks, and seeks only, the girl 
whom he believes born to be his wife. But most 
girls of the age just mentioned seldom feel a fascina- 
tion that is lasting. And before they know that they 
have past the years of admiration the men who would 
have before wedded them will no longer care to think 
of them. Day after day this happens. Men of 
twenty-five, or more, watch the debutante's move- 
ments and anxieties. Of course, they will not be 
too frank in their expressions, but they will be sure 



JOHN L. MEANY 35 

to write everything they see in her upon the tablets 
of memory. 

In this respect man may or may not be mistaken. 
The fact that a girl of eighteen or twenty permits 
her thoughts to wander promiscuously is no reason 
why she would not at some time center them per- 
manently in someone whom she would forever truly 
love. Immature thoughts in a young woman's mind 
are entitled to every reasonable apology that man's 
charity could make. In fact, when woman is de- 
cided she is much more stable in the execution of 
her affections than he who would condemn her fickle- 
ness. And in this connection, it must be said that 
woman 's heart when once won is the purest and great- 
est solution of divine intendment in the creation of 
man. Nevertheless we must write with regret that there 
is today a large percentage of the unmarried men 
over twenty-five who would be married if the per- 
centage of girls were more solicitous in the selection 
of their first determination. This assertion, though 
deplorable, can be verified, if we compare the coun- 
try with the cities. Nearly every young man over 
twenty-five, and a large percentage under that age, 
in the country, is married, while it must be noticed 
that it is very much the other way in the cities. This, 
in verification of the assertion just made, is almost 
self-evident in point of philosophy, for the reason 
that young ladies in the country have but few oppor- 
tunities to lose the charm which familiarity will gen- 
erally destroy. The country young man meets and 
woos his neighbor's daughter while she is yet un- 
sophisticated and young. The Creator's intendment 
is concentrated in the fascination of a feeling that 
has from the beginning of human existence mani- 
fested itself in hearts that love without the aid of 



36 EDITORIALS OF 

artificial manipulation. Even poverty can not keep 
apart two young people who sigh for one another's 
love with hearts that feel the propensities of nature 
emitting from a passion which is not only pure but 
divine. 



MIXED MARRIAGES. 



Mixed marriages are today a question of much 
discussion in the circles of the different churches of 
the Christian faith. Some maintain that young men 
and women should marry wives and husbands of 
their own religious persuasion. The truth or falsity 
of this doctrine seems to be a question too much for 
human intellect to decide. And perhaps it is a mat- 
ter with which churchmen should not meddle with- 
out being first prepared to say that the human heart 
is able to submit itself to the opinions of the dif- 
ferent churches in matters of love. As a rule, a 
husband and wife of the same religious persuasion, 
have less difficulties in understanding each other, 
generally, than would the husband and wife who dif- 
fer religiously in their manner of adoring God. This 
being true, leaves no doubt of the advisability of 
people marrying wives and husbands of their own 
creed, unless the love-action of the heart is diverted 
from its religious affinities in determining where the 
life of its affection can most happily live. To tell 
a man whom he should love and marry, is simply 
telling him that his heart should have no part to play 
in the selection of his life-long companion. 

It is here, then, that the churchman fails to be 
supreme in his advice to young men and women of 
his congregation. If they can not naturally and spon 



JOHN L. MEANY 37 

taneously begin to make marriage selections among 
themselves, it is, in our opinion, wrong for their min- 
isters to try and make them do so. All that he 
should do, and all that he has any right to do, is to 
preach unto them the gospel in the purity of its do(i- 
trine, without side-stepping in any manner the nat- 
ural affinities of the heart. True, he may, and in 
fact it is his duty to, picture the great danger which 
is to be apprehended in making marriages that are 
adverse to the congeniality of consistent thought and 
the divinity of persistent love. For without his ad- 
vice in this respect the young heart may often mis- 
lead the will in determining the soul's true solu- 
tion of the marriage problem. To tell man that he 
should not wed a woman who would not be in every 
respect worthy of his love, whether she loves him 
or not, is not to tell him that he should marry a 
person because she kneels with him before the same 
altar under the doubt just expressed. Neither can it 
be said that a minister of the gospel outsteps the 
privileges of his calling when he tells a young lady 
that she should not permit her heart to love a young 
man whom she does not believe to be entirely worthy 
of being her husband. But a minister of any church 
is very apt to be mistaken whenever he tells two 
young people who love one another that they should 
not marry because they differ in religious opinions. 

In support of this last assertion, we may be per- 
mitted to speak of human acts in the sum of their 
diversity without making an issue which may be dis- 
puted by those who differ from us in philosophical 
conclusions. The sum of life, outside of the path- 
way to salvation, is added as we pass, act after act, 
into the last drama of our earthly existence. And 
in this last scene, the soul will see at her separation 



38 EDITORIALS OF 

from mortal vision, that the same heart she animated 
in this life, will go with her in thought into the bosom 
of eternity. This happens, because the heart is the 
seat of hnman feelings and destined from all eternity 
to have in itself an independent sphere of action 
that can not be either swayed or stemmed beyond the 
endurance given it at the time it was ordained to 
exist. He, then, who tries to intercept the natural 
affinities of the human heart, will lose his efforts in 
the vain glory of his conceit, and find himself, when 
he thinks his day's work is done, without having any- 
thing to show for his labor but the mockery of a 
prejudice that was bom in the sin of his own nar- 
row^-mindedness. 



WOMAN IN HER BEST AND WORST. 

Woman, in the sphere of her beauty and love, sur- 
passes in value the most ardent imagination of man. 
But, in her adventurous and degraded condition, she 
has lost all the charm that would make her fascinat- 
ing to him. True, woman is, and ever shall be in 
every sphere and walk of her existence, man's sweet- 
est thought and the highest aim of his ambition. Yet, 
whenever she walks outside of the sphere of his con- 
sideration, she has no longer any right to claim his 
respect. 

Man's heart is by nature endowed with an inher- 
ent anxiety to love and esteem some woman of his 
fancy. But his heart has no propensity born of na- 
ture to love but one woman. He, therefore, who 
tries to woo and win within one thought two hearts 
which beat to love him with a nature that is pure, 
should never live to mar with dissipation, visions that 



JOHN L. MEANY 39 

beamed into woman's mind from God's own wisdom 
on the day He created Eve. In like manner is 
woman destined to love only one man. And as man 
should only love lawfully, so should woman only love 
when it becomes her to love, and where her love robs 
no other woman of the love she ought to have. 

If these assertions are true, as naturally they must 
be, how deplorable is it to see some ignoble woman 
pursuing without love the weakness of some poor fool 
for the lands he owns and for the money he has in 
his pocketbook. 

True, man is originally to blame for nearly every 
fault that woman has. Yet, this is no excuse for 
worthless and ungodly creatures to rob wife, creditors 
and children of money which should be theirs, because 
it has come within the sphere of their reach to play 
upon the demented condition of some unfortunate 
creature who is unworthy of being called a man. 
And worse still when they attribute to themselves 
the right of being able to do that which, not only 
should make them blush, but which should make their 
sex feel that heaven is almost wrong in permitting 
them to live with a Avoman's face amidst and with 
the human family. 

Thus is woman in her speculative and adventur- 
ous condition. The kiss of nature no longer touches 
her soul with the touch of love. The fire that burned 
her feelings into sweetness and sympathy, before the 
whispers of cupidity made her desolate and barren 
of womanly thought, is no longer warming her soul 
with those aspirations of fineness with which she 
was by God so richly endowed. Yes, aspirations which 
bud so divinely, as to make man feel that the Creator 
could not have made anything more nobly perfect 



40 EDITORIALS OF 

than that which He put into woman's soul at the 
time He created her heart. 

How disappointed then must man feel when he 
begins to see God's noblest work destroyed in na- 
ture 's purest vision of heaven 's design. 

Here let us pause for a minute and view with pain 
the picture which imagination will draw. Then, when 
we have seen all that we can endure, let us begin 
to pity rather than condemn, for, perhaps after all, 
that the picture painted is not as black as it appears 
to us. And, even if it is, let us hope that the same 
mercy will be extended here that was extended by 
the Saviour when he said to the multitude as they 
brought before him the woman taken in sin, ^'He, 
of you, that is innocent cast at her the first stone." 

This consideration, however, should not make us 
stop here. It is within man's power, if he will, to 
make fallen women better than they are. No de- 
pravity of her who is born to be dependent upon 
him will warrant him to put her deeper into the 
gulf of her folly. Yet, it must not here be said that he 
is bound by either the state or moral law, to bring 
back into former beauty, love and grandeur, a woman 
who has, in the unnatural feeling of dissipation, de- 
stroyed everything that nature had made great in her. 

Bearing in mind all the thoughts within the scope 
of this editorial, we may be able to extend our imagi- 
nation far enough to reach the boundaries that en- 
compass the limits of woman's endeavors. She is 
good and holy when man loves her as he should-, 
but she is a dissembling creature of the lowest ebb 
when once made ignoble by his deception True, she 
will sustain herself long after she has become a vic- 
tim to the first persuasions of his deceit. But so 
soon as she falls a prey to the susceptibilities of her 



JOHN L. MEANY 41 

own infirmnesses she is, in nine cases out of ten, 
passed forever beyond man's redeeming possibilities. 
The world knows this, and yet the world pities not. 
Nay, less than pity has the world always had for 
those in trouble and in wrong. It never needs a 
tongue to speak the evil that might be stemmed by 
kinder words. In streams of thought the world 
passes into each succeeding phase of life. And as 
each minute waits upon the dial of time to bury all 
life's past eternity within its own fast passing exist- 
ence, so should the thoughts of past fated memory 
be forever dead in the better thoughts that the new 
life is always willing to give. 



THE UNTHINKING VOTER. 

Ninety per cent of the voters of Texas, like those 
of other states, are more or less inspired by the other 
ten per cent in the matter of casting their ballots on 
election day. How this happens is easy to explain. 
, Men who pursue their vocations honestly have but 
little time to study public affairs; while those who 
do not have to work with their hands, or apply their 
brains, to make a living can, if they choose, devote 
a portion of their time to public thought. This, of 
course, is commendable, for who would be able to 
guide those who have no time to guide themselves, 
unless some one would stop to think for them in 
matters concerning the public welfare. Yet, it some- 
times happens that the greater number of the think- 
ing people do not care whether they lead right or 
wrong, provided they lead into their own pockets 
the object of their studies. Those, then, who have 



42 EDITORIALS OF 

no time to stop and think are very often victims of 
other people's thoughts. 

This condition of affairs in Texas, as well as in the 
nation, is leaving us, today, in a state of useless agi- 
tation. Most of the men with political brains, w^hom 
we meet on the streets, will tell us how important 
it is to know whether or not candidates for the next 
legislature voted for or against Bailey. Thus giving 
us to understand, if we do not stop to think, that 
we have no other vote to cast but one for or against 
a friend or enemy of Bailey. Again, we meet, a 
few minutes later, another class of men who have 
either the corporation blues or the prohibition craze. 
The former of this latter class, wall speak long and 
vehemently of the wrongs committed by President 
Roosevelt upon the innocent bosom of the combined 
trusts of the United States, while the other division 
of this same class will try to tell us at the street 
corners, and sometimes from the pulpit, that the 
sale and barter of strong beverage is bringing deso- 
lation upon the land, breaking up homes and sending 
thousands of souls daily to the perdition of Eternity. 

Prom a moral standpoint, the citizens who approach 
us in this manner may or may not be right. But, 
from a public and logical standpoint, no man of 
sense will permit himself to be guided to the polls 
by whimsical ideas which were inspired either by ig- 
norance or prejudice. Whether Mr. Bailey is or is 
not a man w^orthy of the confidence of the people 
of Texas, is not the question of today. What the 
voters should now do is to elect people who will w^ell 
and truly perform the duties of the offices to which 
they may be elected, regardless of the merits or de- 
merits of a man who has practically passed out of 
the history of our state politics for at least three 



JOHN L. MEANY 43 

years yet to come. In fact, Mr. Bailey never was 
to the people of Texas but their representative in 
the congress of the United States. And whether he 
was or not worthy of the confidence reposed in 
him by those who sent him there^ is a matter to be 
talked of if he puts himself before the people ^of 
Texas for such honor in the future. 

In like manner, why should a candidate be asked 
whether he is for or against the sale and barter of 
liquor at and in an age when the young and old of 
Texas, as well as those of the nation, are considered 
by the powers of the earth to be a most temperate 
and most intelligent peiople. And especially when 
church men, lawmakers and scholars have for nearly 
two thousand years of the Christian era, permitted 
themselves to witness the sale of liquor without a 
murmur. Even the Saviour of the world, at the feast 
of Galilee, w^as pleased to see the guests of that 
feast, drink the wine which he himself had made. 

If Mr. Bailey were now before the people for of- 
fice it would be well for the voters of Texas ti) learn 
whether or not he would be the right man to repre- 
sent them, in congress. But since he is not a candi- 
date for any office, in the coming election, it is not 
too much to say that the people of Texas are paying 
him and his opponents too much honor when they 
make the merits or demerits of some worthy or un- 
worthy candidate dependent on his or his opponent's 
merits or demerits. 

The wise thing then for the voters of Texas, is to 
let Mr. Bailey stand upon his own merits for office 
if he should ever seek one from them again, and 
to ask those who are now seeking office to stand 
before them upon their own merits. This, however, 
they will not do, unless they begin to study the in- 



44 EDITORIALS OF 

justice of punishing the innocent for the sins of 
the wicked, or of believing the unworthy are made 
good because they say they are vouched for by men 
of honor and integrity. 

With this wish in mind, in summing up the politi- 
cal situation of the coming election^ it must be said 
that thought should be the meat of individual per- 
suasion. And if the voters of Texas will not eat 
this food, they may learn w^hen it is too late that the 
stomach, brain and sinew of the state may have lost 
the rich blood of life in the wake of prosperity. 
Or, more directly speaking, they may find themselves, 
after the votes are counted, in a day or two after 
the election, the victims of men w^ho made them be- 
lieve that Bailey and prohibition should be the land- 
marks of their discretion at the polls. 

The safe thing then is for each voter to say to 
himself, ''I shall ignore the right of any man to 
instruct me how I shall cast my ballot at the com- 
ing election. My interest is in Texas because I am 
a citizen of it, and I shall not permit myself to 
be blinded by the mist of political prejudice that is 
now dimming the political vision of the Texas peo- 
ple. What care I about personalities which concern 
only Mr. Bailey and his opponents for political 
honor. His fight with them is only a matter that 
will concern me when he and they will stand before 
the people of Texas for an honor which neither he nor 
they can begin to seek for four years yet to come. ' ' 

If the majority of the voters of Texas will speak 
thus to their conscience, they will be able to blot 
out local prejudice from a civil right which should 
be exercised by every true and upright thinking man. 

As the voter should study the question of not vot- 
ing for or against the wishes of Bailey or Bailey's 



JOHN L. MEANY 45 

enemies in the coming election, so should he study 
the question of not voting for or against the wishes 
of the people who pretend to have the right of tell- 
ing the voters of the state how they should vote 
when the time comes, upon the liquor question. And 
as we have above said, relative to Mr. Bailey, so say 
we now, relative to this question, that the men of 
Texas should say to themselves, ''We, the voters of 
this state, here proclaim ourselves to be for putting 
into office people who will, to the best of their abil- 
ity, uphold and maintain the law in every feasible 
respect as it now stands peremptorily made upon our 
statute books. Yes, put into office men who will 
neither be for nor against those interested in the 
sale of natural stimulants which have been in the com- 
mercial world from the beginning of time.'' 

If the people will so proclaim themselves much 
agitation and unnecessary stump-speaking will be dis- 
pensed mth, and the voters will come to the sane 
conclusion that they are voting for men who will 
not try to do that which they can not do, but who 
will do that which they ought to do — namely, to sup- 
port, maintain and enforce the law as reasonable, 
sane and unprejudiced minds would have made it. 

In like manner, also, should war be made against 
the hair-brained, street corner orators, who urge, 
with the vehemence of their kind, that the financial 
stringency of the nation has been brought about by 
the inhuman sword that Colonel Roosevelt has 
been driving to the hilt into the poor, crippled, help- 
less bodies of the trusts. 



46 EDITORIALS OF 

WOMAN'S REASON IS IN HER HEART. 

''I have no reason but a woman's reason. I think 
him so, because I think him so." — Shakespeare, 1st 
Act, 2d Scene, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona. 

This is what Lucetta said to Julia. And this is 
nearly all the reason that a woman gives in assert- 
ing her likes or dislikes in matters where her prefer- 
ments, without decided cause, are concerned. But it 
is not all she can say in asserting what is right or 
wrong in scales where human conduct is weighed 
with a view of ascertaining what is morally good or 
bad. A woman in the one, is a creature of the heart, 
without reason; in the other, a Solomon, without a 
heart. Man is generally the other way. In shaping 
his likes or dislikes, he dispenses with sentiment and 
uses his judgment. While, on the other question, 
he is nearly always wont to submit his better judg- 
ment to the decisions of his worst feelings. 

This happens, because woman is morally purer and 
man intellectually stronger. As the hot rays of the 
siui will melt the icy crust of the frozen snow, so 
will a woman's wishes melt into feeling every thought 
to the contrary that judgment may try to inspire 
in her heart. But as the purity of gold will not 
be perverted by the ordinary process of chemical 
invention, so will not woman's moral convictions b(^ 
subdued by the weaker methods of man's intrigue. 

Again. As a boat well manned will top the billows 
of the ocean, so will man's judgment master the sen- 
timent of his heart. But as the self -same billows 
will roll under the well manned boat to their watery 
break, so will the evil passions of man's soul break 
into their own pleasures against the protest of his 
better judgment. 



JOHN L. MEANY 47 

THE WAGE-EARNER, TREACHERY AND IN- 
JUSTICE. 

Treachery is the greatest crime in the calendar 
of human error. It lives to kill the efforts of hon- 
esty in every walk and sphere of life. It visits the 
store of the merchant, as well as the field of the 
tfarmer. And it is unscrupulous in robbing the 
wage-earner in the commercial and political fields 
of human strife. In it, there is no love, no mercy, 
no brotherhood of thought. The preachers may 
preach condemnation, children may cry for bread, 
and yet it will not resign its place in the heart of 
the man who once gave it a home within the visions 
of his imagination. In ancient times, as well as in 
recent years, streams of blood have flown from the 
wounds that treachery made. Kings, queens and 
prophets have fallen by the hand of those in whom 
they placed their most filial love and trust. In a 
word, and more strictly speaking, nearly every evil 
pertinent to the confidential relations of men and 
women might have been averted if treachery could 
be driven from the human heart. 

The labor organizations of the state may then stand 
in need of the warning which comes from this edi- 
torial. In their different and various bodies, treach- 
ery is always active. "With them, it plays its game 
from within as well as from without. But more es- 
pecially from within, because it is there it can destroy 
the vital organs of union prosperity. He who has your 
confidence, is the man who can best disclose your 
secrets; and your secrets once disclosed leaves you 
without a weapon in the hands of the enemy. Besides 
he uses your secret as a sword which will raise him- 
self and defeat you. 



48 EDITORIALS OF 

This conclusion needs no argument to prove the 
meaning in it contained. From time to time, it is 
self-evident in the lives of men who have placed 
themselves in good positions at the expense of or- 
ganizations to which they belonged. The politician 
of any body is dangerous unless he is sincere. And 
for the reason that his aim is at all times in the 
direction of himself. This, the body to which he 
belongs, will hardly ever see until it is too late to 
prevent the harm he has done. 

To almost the same extent, but in a different 
way, the schemer on the outside steals the harvest 
of union labor by making its members believe that 
he is the savior of their cause; or by proving to 
them that he is the man who can either give him- 
self or get from others, the advantages which would 
be beneficial to the cause of labor. In fact, the 
wage-earner has been at all times the target of some 
politician or false leader. His vote is needed, and 
it must be gotten by the designers of his downfall, 
if possible. 

But it must not be understood that the employer 
is the designer here referred to. On the contrary, 
the employer is generally a friend to his employes. 
The question then is, who is the designing enemy 
of the wage-earner outside of the organization to 
which he belongs? 

This again is self-evident, because it does not take 
a Solomon to know that the hypocritical politician 
is the laboring man's wickedest designer. Yet, it 
often happens that labor organizations pay more 
attention to the lurings of the designing politician 
than they do to the appeals of a well-meaning em- 
ployer. 

Of course, it will not be here understood that a 



JOHN L. MEANY 49 

heartless corporation has any part to play in the 
meaning attempted to be here conveyed. In this 
connection it will however be conceded that there 
are some corporations so kindly considerate as to 
have some feeling for the welfare of the men who 
work for them. And it must also be here conceded 
that the most heartless corporation has its own spe- 
cific value in commercial life; and inasmuch as its 
commercial value is needed it deserves some con- 
sideration from the laboring man, as well as from 
the people in general. But such a corporation, or 
in fact any corporation, should not in the exercise oi 
its rights, take away the rights of the laboring man. 

In this connection it can be also urged that the 
people should be always on the watch, and ready 
to force from any corporation the service and bene- 
fits it promised to give at the time it became a 
body incorporate. This is the attitude the govern- 
ment should take in the administration of justice 
to all. 

And yet it must, unfortunately, be said that the 
government has often failed in the making and in 
the promulgation of the proper laws in this respect. 
In fact, there are many instances, here in our own 
state, where the corporations have been by law given 
certain legal privileges which work to destroy the legal 
rights of the individual. For instance, the law which 
gives a defendant corporation the right to take the 
deposition of an unfortunate plaintiff who might 
have lost his leg, or have received some other in- 
jury, is a farce in the face of justice; because it 
gives the unscrupulous claim-agent a chance to de- 
velop and devise that which never would have been 
thought of, if all heads concerned had not been given 
plenty of time to think. And still, notwithstanding 



50 EDITORIALS OP 

this, it is feared that some of the framers of this 
unjust law will appear again before the people of 
Texas for suffrage in the next state campaign. Be- 
ware. They will deceive you again as they did be- 
fore. Other laws of like interest to you are yet 
to be made; and other laws of like magnitude are 
ripe to be repealed. Frame your own laws within 
the halls of your definite bodies ; and when you have 
framed them, use your best judgment in electing a 
state ticket which will make them under the super- 
vision of a just decision. 

But in making your selection for the state ticket, 
you must not draw your inspiration from them. Nor 
must you permit yourself to be governed by the 
ambition of someone else. Discuss, argue and digest 
the question well; and then upon the motion before 
the house let the majority rule. Unless you do this, 
the treachery of someone in the minority will be 
prejudicial to the rights of the majority. 



MORAL PROGRESS. 



Men of the present day seem to forget that moral 
progress means more than financial success. He 
who pursues life's journey with the aim of becom- 
ing rich, loses the happiness of being at peace with 
himself. The ambition of becoming rich overtides 
his conscience with waters of discontent. The soul 
is not a thing of earthly creation; it is immortal — 
a spirit of divine origin, born in the flesh to give 
human existence. Man's highest aim should then 
be the possession of that to which his soul is heir. 

The truly happy people are men and women who 



JOHN L. MEANT 51 

see in the vision of their anxieties God's eternal 
image in the soul that gives them life. True, maii 
must make himself useful in the commercial world 
before he can say that he is useful to society. To 
be active in our industrial pursuits, is not to be 
active in the doing of something that is commanded 
not to be done. But to make the getting of money 
the only pleasure of one's life, is to make one's 
self a slave to the possessing of a thing that has 
only a transitory value and which will vanish as if 
it were nothing just as soon as the vision of death 
dims the eyes of those who possess it. Immense 
wealth is generally a source of inevitable worry and 
trouble. The rich man may go where he will and 
see what he may, and yet he will not be happy un- 
less his thoughts rest in peace with his conscience. 
Material things are only material for material pur- 
poses. The necessaries of life are always to be had 
and he who is indifferent in that respect should 
never have been born. Industrial energy and an 
accumulation of wealth is also commendable and gen- 
erally needed in order to make a country prosper- 
ous and great. But to be energetic for the sole pur- 
pose of having money, is nearly as unprofitable as 
to be indifferent. This assertion may not meet with 
the approval of every philosopher. Nevertheless it 
is true, because he who persists in the doing of some- 
thing which does not add to his happiness, is doing 
something which will sooner or later take his happi- 
ness away. Money is worth only what it can buy, 
and enough of anything is all that a man wants. 
Enough to buy enough is all that man in the way 
of necessity needs to have. The laws of nature 
force us to have this; but the laws of perpetual 



52 EDITORIALS OF 

and everlasting endurance bid the soul to be happy 
when its wants are filled. 

In order to exemplify ourselves in this editorial 
we must try to illustrate our meaning by example. 
Take for our first instance the man who devotes 
his entire existence to the making of a fortune that 
is too large for expenditure in the natural sphere 
of use, and you will see a man who has done much 
and accomplished little. The overplus of his for- 
tune goes, in nine cases out of ten, to deteriorate 
the useful ambitions of his offspring. The rich 
man's son is seldom active in the footsteps of his 
father. As a rule he spends the money he inherited 
in the meshes of inspirations which come from idle 
whims that bring to him dissipation and sin. Yes, 
and sometimes worries which make his life a bur- 
den to his existence. The same is true of the daugh- 
ter who inherits a portion of the same w^ealth. The 
man she marries may be some worthless fortune- 
hunter who may lead her a miserable life and make 
her rue the day she was born to inherit riches which 
were put into the pockets of her father with fingers 
of greed. Yes, with a greed that made him for- 
get the duties he owed to God, to himself, to his 
children and to his country. The anxieties he 
wasted in filling the fleshpots of Egypt took from 
his heart the divinely pure and holy thoughts of 
a happy hereafter. Thoughts with which God en- 
dowed his soul at the time he gave him existence, 
and which would make him feel before, and at the 
time he closed his eyes to see no more, that this 
life is only a place where he was put to live, and 
for no other purpose, but to serve and love him 
whose breath he was and whose breath he is in what- 
ever sphere his soul may live in eternity. 



JOHN L. MEANY 58 

Again, take for our second illustration, the man 
who made money to live instead of living to make 
money, and you will see a man who lived under the 
divine beams of God's choicest pleasure. If he had 
children, his first ambition was to teach them that 
this world is only a place put into existence for 
the purpose of giving man a chance to make him- 
self worthy of an eternal home in a better land. 
True, he did not think that it was a sin to make 
money. No, indeed! But on the contrary, he taught 
his children that it was good and holy to put some- 
thing in the bank for a rainy day. And especially 
he taught them that it is God's wish that men 
earn, save and accumulate money without permitting 
themselves to be actuated with the spirit of avarice 
and greed — ^keeping always before their minds that 
the purest and best happiness is found in the heart 
while the soul is not seeking its pleasure in the flesh- 
pots of life. 

Then, when he is dead and in the home of his 
reward, the children who survive him will, in nine 
cases out of ten, follow in the footsteps of the father 
who taught them, in his lifetime, those precepts 
which instilled into their hearts the great virtue of 
knowing that the human family was put into exist- 
ence for nobler purposes than to adore with hearts 
of avarice things that were only given them for 
earthly use. 

The picture painted in the diagram here drawn can 
be only seen with eyes of moral perception. Those 
who have already permitted their feelings to kiss 
with anxiety the fancies of greed will hardly be able 
to look into spiritual visions with eyes which have 
long since been trained to see things that live only 
in the flesh. But the man who has lived to make 



54 EDITORIALS OF 

life the stage of a spiritual exhibition will have no 
trouble in seeing the picture of moral conception in 
the diagram herein exhibited. 

To this effort we beg to add that preachers of the 
gospel should exert themselves more diligently in 
advancing the doctrine of Christ. Sometimes now-a- 
days it is to be deplored that men of much talent and 
devotion spend a very valuable portion of their time 
in telling people how they should manage their pri- 
vate business, instead of exhorting their parishion- 
ers to love money less and God more. To live, eat 
and dress rightly is not a crime, but a virtue. With 
the doing of these things the preachers have nothing 
to do. A man's stomach, bones, flesh and physical 
appearance belong entirely to himself. But his soul, 
the immortal word that gave him life before he was 
yet touched by the air of earth, belongs to God, and 
it is of it the preachers ought to take care. 



MARRIAGE GENERALLY. 

In a former issue we discussed the question of 
why don't young men marry; in this issue, we shall 
take up the question of marriage generally. 

Years ago there was no need of writing upon this 
subject. Today, it is the first apprehension of those 
who have the advancement of civilization at heart. 
To see how human morals have deteriorated in the 
last twenty years, is a matter which makes the man 
and woman of thought fear that the world is drift- 
ing swiftly back to the days, when Nero unbridled 
his shameless love within the walls of Pompeii. To 
have a wife, as he put it, was to be a slave to a 



JOHN L. MEANY 55 

virtue that could not be endured. Woman, in his 
mind, was a creature to be fancied rather than to 
be loved. 

How will the Neroes of today compare with the 
Neroes of those who lived in the days before Pom- 
peii was yet in ruins? In number infinitely more, 
in virtue infinitely less. Eefinement, to be sure, 
has advanced. Shame takes the place of boasted in- 
dulgence, and the modesty of woman is protected 
while her heart beats to suffer the forgetfulness and 
infidelity of the husband who seeks places of pleas- 
ure which are too vile to be conceived where virtue 
lives. This is life in its high-toned condition; this 
is woman in her fidelity and love. 

In the early ages of the Christian era she was 
happy because man honored and loved her. The 
king's court and the peasant's hut were lighted by 
her smiles and made happy by her presence. Her 
hand was sought in marriage before the tender 
blushes of girlhood had yet left her cheeks. Then, 
as it should be now, she did not live to woo, but 
to be wooed. Smiles, blushes and feeling she always 
had, but had them only for him to whom she gave 
her will, life and love. Retaining nothing and wish- 
ing nothing but her claim on him. 

While those days have slowly, but surely, suc- 
ceeded one another into the riper days of the pres- 
ent century, man succeeds himself from age into 
age, gradually leaving behind him in the wake of 
his ancestors the best part of his inheritance — the 
desire of having a wife to share his love. 

With this loss of early feelings he begins his life 
to make himself poorer in his respect for woman 
and richer in his inclinations to dissipate and sin. 
Day by day he fosters in his heart the desire of 



56 EDITORIALS OF 

making Egypt his visionary home, until eventually 
he loses in his rapidly growing selfishness every feel- 
ing that woman would otherwise inspire in his heart. 
All this woman sees. And she, too, loses, little by 
little, her former timidity and beauty of soul, until 
at last she permits herself to be wooed and won 
upon terms of love that means but little more than 
an agreement Avhich may be set aside at the will 
of either party to a contract that was not made 
to perpetuate love, but to make souls more unhappy 
than they were before the sinful union was formed. 



HOW TO LIVE HEALTHY. 

The human system should be fertilized somewhat 
like a garden growing vegetables in the spring time 
of the year. Just as rich and poor soil should be 
treated differently, so should healthy and sickly peo- 
ple treat themselves, respectively, in their choice and 
application of food. 

This comparison is, however, somewhat wanting in 
point of fact, because rich, moist soil will produce 
good crops without being fertilized, while a healthy 
man will nearly always require more food for the 
maintenance of his system than will the sickly man 
require for his. Yet, in point of deduction the inspi- 
ration of the comparison will serve us in developing 
ideas which may help in the solution of a proper 
understanding about w^hat we should eat and drink. 
When you see a man who has no special chronic 
trouble of any kind, without either ambition or 
energy, you will naturally feel there is something 
wrong with either his mind or his system. In like 



JOHN L. MEANY 57 

manner, you will know that rich soil has been in 
some way neglected if it does not produce good crops. 
It is different with a man who is really sick, and 
with soil that is really poor. The man needs a doc- 
tor, and the soil needs to be fertilized. But as fertili- 
zation will not, without the aid of the gardener's 
spade and hoe, bring from the poor soil the desired 
crop, neither will the doctor, even with his medicine 
be able to restore the sick man to health without the 
aid of the proper food. And as the rich soil, in our 
first premise, will eventually become poor if not 
properly fertilized while under repeated cultivation, 
so will a healthy man eventually lose his vitality 
and strength if his system is not daily treated with 
the proper food and drink. 

Having thus stated our question, we hope the 
reader will follow us into the details of our effort. 

The first thing a man should do after getting out 
of bed in the morning, is to stand erect, with his 
heels as close as he can possibly bring them together, 
but at an angle of forty or forty-five degrees. Hav- 
ing this done, his next move should be to lift his out- 
stretched arms in as nearly a perpendicular a posi- 
tion as possible to the joints of his shoulders. Then 
closing his fists as tightly as he can, let him raise 
them gradually, but firmly, until he has brought 
them parallel with his head ; extending his chest and 
distending his abdomen and stomach at the same 
time, and finishing by bringing his arms down, in a 
backward direction parallel with his sides. This exer- 
cise done gently two or three times will tend very 
greatly to put in motion a proper circulation of the 
blood. Besides this, it will give to the chest, abdomen, 
limbs, stomach, muscles, lungs and nervous system, 
an endurance that will be very valuable in older a^e. 



58 EDITORIALS OF 

as well as an activity that can not be ignored in the 
present time. 

After this exercise he should fill his lungs with 
fresh air and drink a glass of water before he leaves 
his room. Then, if at all convenient, he should take 
a glass of the best sherry wine immediately before 
he begins to eat his breakfast. Of course, what he 
should eat at this meal depends a good deal upon 
what would agree with him best. But we can assert, 
from a medical standpoint, that the stimulating and 
nourishing forces of the wine will be very beneficial 
to the membranes and digesting machinery of the 
stomach, without in any way creating a false appe- 
tite, such as whiskey might do. 

When the noon hour comes he is ready to eat his 
lunch. But, in doing this, he should be careful lest 
he might eat too much of what should not go into his 
stomach until after business hours. The Swedes, 
Germans, and other European people, have long since 
discovered that beer is the proper midday drink. 
The malt and hops have a mild stimulating effect on 
the stomach, which put in motion a vibrating action 
of the blood as it goes into the re-actionary mem- 
branes of the bowels and kidneys, and putting at the 
same time the nutrition of the rice into the muscles, 
limbs and body. 

This, of course, is only true of pure beer, made out 
of malt, rice and hops. Imitations will not serve the 
system as above stated. But real pure beer, contain- 
ing in every barrel, forty-six pounds of malt, twelve 
pounds of rice, and one pound of hops, brewed in 
pure artesian water, is, indeed, the most wholesome 
drink that can be put into the human stomach. In 
quenching thirst, it is much more effective than 



JOHN L. MEANT 59 

water ; and in many instances, it is much more invig- 
orating and nourishing than solid food. 

Yet beer alone will not be sufficient for the mid- 
day meal of a healthy man. In order to be strong 
and enduring he must eat with it a small portion of 
meat, one kind of vegetable and a little cereal food. 
With this mixture, in process of digestion within 
his stomach, he will find himself very active and 
ambitious for the rest of the day. 

When supper comes, which really ought to be the 
dinner, he may eat anything and everything that 
will naturally agree with him. But he should be 
cautious in selecting his drink. A little tea or cof- 
fee will not hurt him, but a moderate drink of wine 
or beer would be much more wholesome and nour- 
ishing. 

Before going to bed, and he should go to bed early, 
he might drink just enough of beer to make him feel 
sleepy; but in no instance ought he to eat anything 
after putting the beer in his stomach, unless he 
should really feel very hungry. 

With this the business man of regular habits is 
through. And he begins to compose himself for a 
good night's rest in order that he may be able to 
enjoy the activities of the coming day. 

Now, in order to sustain ourselves in the compari- 
son made we must recompare our conclusions by way 
of similes. With the man of health, the morning exer- 
cise and the activities of the day may be reasonably 
said to have the same effect upon him that the spade 
and hoe of the gardner may have upon rich soil. In 
the same manner, what he drank will nourish his 
body and general system in a good deal the same 
way that fertilization may give productive endur- 
ance to the soil in question. But as a sick man must 



60 EDITORIALS OF 

more or less trust in his doctor, so must poor soil 
depend largely, if not entirely, for its producing 
qualities, upon the manner in which it is cultivated 
and fertilized. 

Yet, as a counter conclusion to the one just given, 
it must be said that a man who is sickly can, in the 
absence of a chronic disease, be very useful to him- 
self if he will eat properly, and at proper times. 

In every instance, a tablespoonful of sherry wine 
should be his first food in the morning. Then, im- 
mediately he might eat one fresh egg, well cooked, 
with toast and a half-and-half cup of tea and cream. 

In taking exercise, he should follow the instruc- 
tions of his doctor. But in eating at the noon hour, 
it might be well for him to follow our advice. 
Another spoonful of sherry wine, then, a small cup 
of well made pea-soup, with a biscuit and a fresh 
glass of beer, should be his lunch, unless his stomach 
is strong enough to digest a very small piece of 
porterhouse steak. 

AVhen supper time comes, he must be very care- 
ful to eat what agrees with him. And above all, he 
must not go to bed without either drinking a glass 
or a half-glass of beer. We give this advice peremp- 
torily, because we know from experience and from 
study that the malt and hops will aid the stomach 
in putting the nutrition of the rice into the flesh, 
blood, muscle and general system. Besides this, beer 
has just about enough of stimulating power to soot-h 
the nerves and put the patient gently to sleep. 



JOHN L. MEANY 61 

SHORT EDITORIALS. 



Insane love is a sign of mental weakness. It goes 
into the heart from the head, and lives there by per- 
suading the mind that it is a real, genuine, sincere 
passion. 

How foolish ! Why should any person love without 
being loved? Love is the only price that can pur- 
chase love. And without love, love should not be 
sold. Yet there has been in every walk of life some 
men and women who were mad enough to kill them- 
selves for people who could not love them. 



Is Texas chivalry dying away, or is it that custom 
permits woman to be criticised and laughed at when 
she passes men by? Years ago, woman was loved and 
honored in Texas with more chivalry than that of 
other states. Today, she is the downtrodden victim of 
of gossip at the street corners, barber shops and 
saloons. Strange that such conversations can be en- 
joyed by men who would not care to live where 
women would not be ! And stranger still that the love 
man has for his wife and home cannot inspire him to 
respect the homes and wives of his fellowmen. 



In the latter part of last month, a doctor, who was 
called to the bedside of a sick boy from the Prohibi- 
tion Bureau, said in answer to a question asked by 
the mother of the little fellow : 

^^Hypocritical insanity is very catching, and when 
once caught, it is one of the most dangerous cases of 



62 EDITORIALS OF 

lunacy known to medical science. In this instance, 
however, there is some hope, because the boy is young. 
Give him, regularly, about 300 drops of pure liquor 
in water three times a day for six months, and, by 
that time, the germs of the dread disease may be 
eliminated from his mind." 



The midnight home-comer may be always very 
greatly courted and sometimes somewhat admired; 
but she who stays at home to think of love in mar- 
ried life will be much more intensely sought for a 
bride. This happens because outside-door love has 
airy notions that feel a wantonness of true thought, 
w^hile that made under the protection of a parent's 
eye partakes of a sombre richness which makes the 
w^ooer feel that when he kisses, the kiss will be a 
kiss of love. "Woman is not always what she thinks she 
is, and man only means what he says when he loves 
wath the intention of making the girl he wooes his 
wife. 



Labor Day is the holiday of labor union pride. It 
comes once a year to inspire new thoughts and to 
enkindle in the heart of the man of toil a vivid desire 
of bettering his own condition and the condition of 
his fellow man. It also comes with a mission from 
heaven to show the rich that the poor should have 
equal rights in the distribution of divine favors. The 
cord of human relationship is on this day entwined 
around the spirit of the God-fearing with a knot of 
forebearance and love, and the selfishness with 
which all human nature is imbued loses its poison in 
the heartfelt greetings that come from the solemnity 
which nature gives to the wishes and happiness ex- 



JOHN L. MEANY 63 

pressed by the lips of the millions who participate 
in the celebration and glories of this great day. 



Prohibition might satisfy the thirst of people who 
wish to drink the life blood of the state, but it will 
never taste well to the palate of men who are 
anxions to populate and cultivate the vast and un- 
Imown acreage of ranch and land property in Texas. 
Neither will it make a living for the 25,000 people 
who are making a living by working for and in 
places where beer and whiskey is sold. How foolish 
and how wanton it is to make war upon an industry 
that is as Godlike and as necessary as any other 
business known to American commerce. But such 
is life in an age where the broad-minded and noble 
statesman is superceded by the conceited politician 
who arrogates to himself the right of making a cam- 
paign that is only agitating the minds of men 
and women who would otherwise live in a peaceful 
happiness that Texas is fully able to give. 



It is strange that some parents, husbands and 
brothers would not some time begin to see the same 
images of their daughters, wives and sisters in the 
faces of some ladies whom they would like to abuse, 
and about whom they talk without scruple. Yet some 
of these men would not hesitate to take the life of a 
fellowman, who would in the least dare to insult 
their wives, sisters or daughters, as the case might 
be. 

This happens because an ignorant man sees only 
himself in all things that may become a part of his 
own selfish anxieties. The sensitiveness and refine- 



64 EDITORIALS OF 

ment of those who do not concern him mean but 
naught in his feelings. Even he may look upon the 
purity and sweetness that woman naturally has as 
fascinations with which she is specially endowed to 
please his selfish desires. And the feelings which her 
beauty inspires in nobler minds beget imaginations in 
his that cannot be here described. 



In the British Isles the child has always a father 
and the father has always a child. Here in America, 
it is different. Just as soon as a son can live 
without his father he asserts his independence. This 
latter custom may be the best, but it is not as inspir- 
ing as the former. A parent in the British Isles, with 
a fortune of $25,000.00, and having, for example, 
four children, will give each of them about $5000.00 
just as soon as each one becomes of age. 

In this country the father generally keeps what 
he has until he dies, and until his children do not 
need it. Thus severing the relation of parent and 
son by the selfishness of the one and the inde- 
pendence of the other. 

To foreigners it looks deplorable to see men over 
sixty active in business and controlling a large for- 
tune, while their married children may be in poor 
circumstances waiting for a division of the fortune 
that generally comes too late to be rightly enjoyed. 
This is the brutal and ungodly greed that the dollar 
creates in some American minds. 



The greater percentage of the laboring world are 
creatures of circumstances. They work because they 
have to work. But should they refuse, they would 



JOHN L. MEANY 65 

die of hunger. In this assertion the wealthy, easy- 
living people of the world are equally included, be- 
cause if there was nothing for the poor there would 
be nothing for the rich. Ponder, then, you who have 
means, and you will readily see that the life of your 
existence depends upon the conduct of the working 
classes. If they should refuse to work, you would 
have to work yourself or die of starvation. Yet many 
say daily that they are independent of the laboring 
man. How foolish and how inconsistent with the phi- 
losophy of human existence. If this could be so there 
would be no concession made in the field of human 
rights. He who is rich would say to him who is poor, 
^^I do not need you;" and he who is poor would say 
to him who is rich, ''I can live without you.'' But 
since man is dependent on man there is no man 
who can say this. The world is w^hat men make it, 
and men make one another. 



Men should never act when passionately excited. 
Man's reasoning powers are given to him to solve 
things and answers for himself from due deliberations, 
and with reasonable assistance from the proper source, 
when such assistance may be needed. Fanaticism is 
not a conclusion of the reasoning powers. It comes 
from a senseless anxiety w^hich was bred in the nar- 
row-mindedness of ill-founded feelings. Sometimes 
it is a religious craze, born of selfishness; and again 
it peeps out in the actions of some men from the inspi- 
rations of envy. See it as you will and it will 
always wear the sword of condemnation. And, above 
all, it will remain persistently unyielding to the 
forces of any argument that do not agree with its 
own understanding of things. The natural instincts, 



66 EDITORIALS OF 

propensities and feelings of the human family, must 
in every instance, either stem their individual cur- 
rents, or be condemned by it. Beware of it, and do 
some thinking of your own. But do not be too posi- 
tive, lest you may become too self-possessed. The 
wise man will see, hear and think before he acts in 
personal, social or political matters of any serious 
importance. 



It is not the sale of liquor as a commodity, but the 
sale of liquor where liquor should not be sold that 
makes liquor a menace to society. This must be 
admitted by the preacher, because the sale of liquor 
under proper restrictions, is in the opinion of 
wise men and physicians conducive to the health and 
morals of the people. High license and the abolition 
of the $1.00 bottle from the red light resorts will 
make the sale of liquor like the sale of any other thing. 
That is, if our officers of the law will keep them- 
selves within the law and uphold the law as the law 
should be upheld. But unfortunately for the people, 
it is not always easy to get fearless, honest officers. 
If we had them at all times, and in all places, we 
would not have as many crimes and sins in the homes 
of the fallen; and above all. little offenses would not 
be so severely punished while the wicked crimes of 
the privileged go invariably without notice. But un- 
fortunately for the betterment of the American people, 
this happens because there is a stepping stone from 
which people without either merit or honor can some- 
times jump into places where men of merit and honor 
only should be ; and where the unfit become criminals 
while making criminals out of some of those whom 
they had sworn to protect in the innocence of a happy 



JOHN L. MEANY 67 

sphere, where they might forever remain if the sleuth 
hounds of selfishness and greed could be kept away 
from their homes. 



There has been some doubt in the minds of some 
philosophers as to whether the miser or the spend- 
thrift is the most undesirable citizen. Some argue 
that the miser's money may be of some use to some 
people in some future generation; and others urge 
that the spendthrift's money does some good for 
some people in some walks of this generation. As to 
who may be right or wrong is the question given us 
to answer in this editorial. The miser's money will, 
of course, do some good for some people in some future 
generation, but he who is destined to live in the future 
has no part to play in either the struggles or pleas- 
ures of this present life. And what he may then 
do will not in any way aid or assist us in the doing of 
the things that we must do now. Besides, the miser is 
furnishing in himself what is of him here said, and in 
the man who spends his money in the future, 
the spendthrift of our argument. Thus giving us not 
only a miser, but a spendthrift as well. Hence we 
answer that he who spends his money now is a more 
desirable citizen than he who stores it for the pleasure 
of people, whose deeds of extravagance and ungrate- 
fulness may haunt him in his grave through the ages 
of eternity. 



Men employed in the service of corporations for 
the purpose of taking care of juries in our courts of 
law bear the closest kind of watching. The court is 
always unsuspicious, and for the reason that a judge 
should assume, unless otherwise informed, that no 



68 EDITORIALS OF 

one would be bold enough to take any privilege in 
his court which would be in any way contrary to 
the law. But if some of the things that are done 
were brought to the knowledge of some of our judges, 
there might have been some strange revelations 
brought to light. It used to be that now and again 
a lawyer had nothing to do in a trial court but to 
try his case. Now he must either watch the corpor- 
ation bribers or get someone to watch them for him 
before he can hope for a verdict, no matter how able 
a lawyer he may be. 

In a recent case tried in a certain court some 
place in Texas one of the jurors was then, before, and 
since, in the service of the defendant corporation 
for the purpose of taking care of it in the court room 
with as many of the jurors as he might be able to 
approach or talk with. 

This is only one instance among a number which 
could be here cited, and Avithout the slightest fear of 
not being able to prove the accusation asserted. 



The repeated continuance of a case nearly always 
works against the justice of the plaintiff's cause. In 
every instance the defendant gains. No matter what 
happens in the future, he wins in the present. Time 
is always to him an advantage, and he generally gets 
it when he can. 

In Europe when a case comes on to be heard, the 
court will not listen to the reading of a motion for 
a continuance unless the motion shows that the thing 
which can not be then done, can and will be done or 
waived when the case is again called. 

If judges would do this in Texas, they would be 
much more respected than they are; and corporation 



JOHN L. MEANY 69 

lawyers would not be so often able to defeat a plain- 
tiff's rights. But perhaps the next legislature will 
enact a law that will prescribe definitely when a judge 
may grant or refuse a continuance. When discretion 
becomes the prerogative of erring man, some one will 
sometime suffer, and justice will very often become 
the sport of fraud. 



Why there is so much evil in man is one of the 
mysteries of human study. From a moral view over 
the visions of inspiration, it is not hard to see the 
better side of Adam's nature, because it must be 
accepted that the work of God is perfect. Yet a phi- 
losopher who believes in this loses himself in his 
effort to travel into the secrets of divine creation. 
This happens because finite imagination is limited to 
the boundaries that encompass the thoughts of our 
present state and apast which the vision of the soul 
can not go until it is lighted into the land of im- 
mortality. Then, that which seems impossible to it in 
moral life will become as plain as itself in the map of 
eternity. 

That there is good and evil in every man is a fact 
which every man knows; and that the world would 
be better if all men had no evil in them, is accepted 
as true by the layman and preacher alike. But 
neither the layman nor the preacher can say that the 
Creator of all things lacked either in wisdom or in 
power when he permitted the first feeling of evil to 
beget itself in the human heart. 

This thought, if well conceived, will bring the 
scholar to the shrine of humility and there force him 
to admit that the ways of God can only be understood 
in the mind that yields up its reasoning powers to the 
inspirations of divine faith. 



70 EDITORIALS OF 



SHORT SAYINGS. 



Beware of the friendship of a friend who winks 
his eye for the purpose of receiving aid to deceive you. 



Those who beat the lawyer by doing their own 
legal work, generally learn when it is too late that 
they were only giving the lawyer a chance to beat 
them. 



Woman is the natural heir of man's admiration, 
and she would have it entirely if she always kept in 
mind that she was not made to court, but to be 
courted. 



A rich father should advise his children to marry 
at the first sensible opportunity given them, but he 
should never advise them into wedlock against the 
wishes of their own selection. 



To be too nice is to be worse than ugly. Well- 
meaning ladies never see evil but in evil itself; while 
girls of a suspicious nature are wont to imagine what 
was never intended to be said. 



Affections conceived in the mind will never ripen 
into pearls of adoration; the heart is the only seat 
of love. But a man may have in his soul the essence 
of love without feeling its pain. 



JOHN L. MEANT 71 

Nearly every human heart would be always warm 
and loving if the bitter cold of the world's frost could 
be kept away from there. It is environment and not 
nature that makes man uncharitable. 



He who takes the world too seriously generally 
finds the world too serious for him. But he who 
takes the world as he finds the world is never dis- 
appointed in anything the world does. 



Those who begin to love money, can scarcely ever 
again love anything else but it. This happens because 
the heart has always one controlling passion that 
burns up every other feeling of the soul. 



A polite man will sit at table without caring 
to make himself noticed, while the ill-bred man who 
has acquired a social standing will always try to be 
the most noticeable person in the dining room. 



It has been written by a well known poet that a 
little learning is a dangerous thing. If this asser- 
tion is correct he who has learned only a little is 
worse than ignorant in matters of educational debate. 



This world has enough for all if selfishness could be 
moderated in the human heart. Men who have no 
feeling in the welfare of their fellowmen may learn, 
when it is too late, that their Jives have been ill-spent. 



To perpetuate a man in office generally gives him 
an idea that he can do as he pleases. But to limit 



72 EDITORIALS OF 

a man's time in office is giving him to understand 
that he is only a servant of the people who elected 
him. 



A man should never associate himself in business 
with a woman without putting his contract with her 
in writing. And not because her word is not good, 
but because she is very apt to forget the real essence 
of the agreement. 



A jealous husband who loves his wife is very apt 
to make her and himself a miserable married couple. 
But he who would not be jealous, even if he had 
reason, destroys with indeference every pure thought 
in his wife's soul. 



Every man of sound mind should be held account- 
able for his acts, even though philosophers say that 
a man may be morally right and logically wrong. 
But he who steals another man's purse is morally 
and logically a thief. 



A really polite man will hardly ever try to make 
himself too much at home at the house of his friend, 
while a man of less conceptive habits will not hesi- 
tate to welcome himself without timidity in every 
place he may be invited. 



Some people seem to think that it is to their inter- 
est to keep other people poor. This is a mistake, 
because a poor man has nothing to give, while a man 
of means may, through some strain of thought, be 



JOHN L. MEANT 73 

moved to help some person in need. Even the man 

who envies his neighbor may some day need the 
assistance of the man he envies. 



He who does not try to know himself, fails to 
take the first step that would lead him into the 
pathway of peace and good will among men. An 
erroneously conceived idea is nearly always a dan- 
gerous thought to have. 



Money should not tempt a refined lady to marrj' 
a man of rough habits, even though he might be 
handsome. Neither should a man of fine feelings 
marry a pretty woman of inferior manners, even 
though she might be rich. 



To argue with a lady in social matters is always 
in bad taste and never of any use. Woman is not 
convinced by argument, but by a gentle submission 
which generally wins her heart. She was not made to 
be forced, but to be won. 



As a rose buds in the season of its bloom, so does 
woman love in the passion of her heart. But as the 
bloom of the rose is faded by winds that are adverse, 
so will man's forgetfulness destroy in woman the 
passion that makes her love. 



To console one 's self by believing that a good thing 
should be done, does not make a man who so believes 
better than other men of his kind, unless he tries to 
do good when it is possible for him to make himself 



74 EDITORIALS OF 

worthy of his thoughts. To wish a friend well does 
the friend no good if he is hungry. But to give a 
hungry man something to eat will do him more good 
than would a million of kind words. 



The man who makes love to a lady for the pur- 
pose of trifling with her feelings is a man with whom 
no woman can be really happy. But she who pre- 
tends to love a man for the sake of getting a hus- 
band should not live to be married. 



Sensible people can be rich with impunity; while 
foolish rich people are dangerous* to themselves and 
useless to society. A girl with money can love as 
sincerely as a poor girl; but a lady of means gen- 
erally fears she is loved for her money. 



The only apology which can be made for a man 
who curses is to say that he does not mean what he 
says. This may be sufficient for people of his own 
kind, but men of polite habits will never cease to 
think that his manners were neglected in his youth. 



It is seldom difficult for a well-bred man to be 
civil; but sometimes it may be very hard for the 
most refined person to make himself always appre- 
ciated. Yet, it must be conceded that a man with 
a civil tongue will live in peace, where a man with 
a rough disposition may always be in trouble. 



Well-bred people are never exact, but they are al- 
ways cautious in conversation. Ill-bred men are the 



JOHN L. MEANY 75 

other way. To omit some little technicality of eti- 
quette borrowed from somebody else is to them an 
unpardonable crime, and to say what they please 
is a privilege they must have in spite of every friend 's 
rebuke. 



Those who consider marriage a civil contract are 
as susceptible to breach its tenor as they are to fail 
in the keeping of any other agreement. But those 
who become man and wife, while believing they are 
put together by the act of God, will never forget 
that they are man and wife so long as they both 
shall live. 



It may not be in bad taste to entertain a man in 
his own office with something that does not con- 
cern anybody but an idler. Yet the man thus en- 
tertained would be much better pleased if his friend 
would not insist upon making him listen to fairy 
tales while he is busily engaged in the doing of some- 
thing else. 



Men who think themselves just because everything 
they have was legally gotten, are nevertheless moral 
thieves, if they have, in the getting of anything they 
possess, taken any legal advantage of a legal trans- 
action which might be otherwise if all parties to 
the transaction were just. A man may be legally 
right and morally wrong; but he who is morally 
right is never wrong, even though he may legally lose. 



Reformation and not prohibition is what Texas 
needs. The existence of a respectable saloon is not 



76 EDITORIALS OF 

only legitimate, but desirable. Any kind of industry 
conducted for the benefit of the public welfare is com- 
mendable if kept pure in its operation. But the 
noblest efforts of men in the transaction of human 
affairs may become injurious to the morals of a 
community if the finger of restraint is not always 
kept pointing to the pinnacle of legitimate endeavor. 



To injure a man because you do not like him is 
to do something that another man might do unto 
you for the same cause. The fact that you do not 
like a man does not give you the right to do him 
harm. Hundreds and hundreds of times you 
might yourself have been disliked by men who, 
through a sense of justice, have permitted themselves 
to do you good in time of need. The proverb is and 
always should be, ^^If you can't help, don't injure." 



JOHN L. MEANY 77 



NOT NEEDED WHEN BUSY. 

No matter how good-natured a busy man may be, 
he will sometimes get angry with his best friends if 
they persist in engaging his busy time without busi- 
ness during busy hours. And yet it sometimes 
happens that men who will not permit themselves to 
be annoyed will not hesitate to destroy a busy portion 
of other men's time. He who does not hesitate to be 
continuously interrupted by friendly callers at his 
place of business is not very apt to be ever able to 
help himself or his friends in matters where money 
is needed. But from this we hope it will not be 
inferred that it is ugly to pass a man the regular 
morning or evening salute when you meet him on 
the street. Or that it is wrong to ask a friend when 
you meet him in a hotel to have a cigar, a dinner, or 
some other kind of refreshments. But it is ugly, and 
sometimes very wrong, to walk into a man's office 
or place of business without apology and open a 
conversation which has no earthly value for him. Here, 
however, it must be said that some men of very 
fine social habits do this without thinking that they 
are doing the slightest harm to the friend who 
hates to be discourteous to them. 

Having suggested thus, we may be permitted to add 
that man has naturally in his soul an instinctive fine- 
ness of wishing to please his fellow men. And this, 
notwithstanding that it may sometimes appear to us 
that some men are naturally wicked from the very 
beginning of their existence. This apparently incon- 
sistent disposition in most men is either an inherited 
propensity or a weakness of the nerve system which 
may be exaggerated by environment. 



78 EDITORIALS OF 

In asserting thus we may be permitted to further 
add that intrusion is not a fault hatched for the pur- 
pose of injuring any one, but rather an almost incur- 
able mistake, which sometimes does as much harm 
to the intruder as it does to the party intruded upon. 
The man who worries a friend with his friendship 
when busy will always lose his own time and some- 
times the friendship and good will of the friend, who 
cannot always endure a sociability that persists in 
destroying his daily business plans. 



COMMERCIALLY RESPECTED. 

In olden times the knights of honor proudly held 
that a man who told a lie without a gentleman 's cause 
was a man of ignoble birth and of bad principle. 
Today, the knights of wealth hold with equal pride 
that it is not good policy to employ in trustworthy 
positions men who have not the exceedingly valuable 
gift of being able to lie when occasion demands such 
a service from them. In studying the difference 
between the knights of the past and those of the pres- 
ent, we readily see a distinction that gives to moral 
depravity the wicked honor of being today the most 
valuable product of human habits. The sword is no 
longer wielding in the hand of the knight to demand 
restitution by way of apology from the lips of the 
wretch who had dared to insult the world with a 
falsehood. Integrity and moral worth have long since 
ceased to be a proud man's pride. Give him now a 
machine of human tongues and he will inveigle into 
confidence the victims of his greed by the rapidity 
of its dissimulation. 



JOHN L. MEANY 79 

But this dissimulating rapidity of unscrupulous 
greed is not as dangerous to the happiness of a 
community as is the tongue of some ill-bred woman 
who makes it her business to slander some -poor un- 
fortunate sister against whom she may have a spite. 

Thus thinking, we cannot help to deplore how the 
fastidious grandeur of former pride has been wrecked 
on the billows of the great human sea that flows 
and ebbs to and from the bathing strand of human 
thought. 



POLITENESS. 



Politeness is a gift inherited, not taught. It differs 
from culture in positive ways. The gentleman who is 
naturally polite seldom hurts the feelings of his asso- 
ciates, while the man of varnished culture may often 
say and do things very displeasing to his daily com- 
panions. Take, for instance, the man who plays 
society with all the art known to its schools, and who, 
after having technically observed every social demand, 
leaves his friends with an air of superiority that 
makes them feel they have wasted the reception given 
him. And take again, in point of comparison, the 
man who may not be able to observe all the rules 
of the society parlor, but who will leave in the minds 
of his parlor friends, notwithstanding his lack of par- 
lor manners, an anxiety of meeting him again. Then, 
when you have viewed the difference between the two 
compared you will readily see that politeness and cul- 
ture are not always one and the same thing. 

But knowing this will not give you a true concep- 
tion of the inspiration peeping out from the compari- 
son made. You must, in order to get a satisfactory 



80 EDITORIALS OF 

vision of the diagram, picture from material observa- 
tion the difference between the genuine and the 
imitation. The diamond will be always a diamond, 
while the glass that is shaped into its image will be 
only a diamond when it glitters in a vision that is 
only sensitive to color and shade. The man who is 
naturally polite is always a gentleman, while the man 
of exterior grace and polish is only a gentleman in 
the estimation of those who are equally as lacking as 
he himself is. 



ENVY IN THE HUMAN HEART. 

The vision of human thought is clouded daily with 
some misrepresentation from the garden of human 
acts. Whatever man may say or do will, to some 
extent, either dim or enlighten the activities of his 
soul. There is no such a thing as passive action 
without effect. Nature is susceptible to every inva- 
sion of its own propensities. And this is true in the 
lesser degree as well as in the greater. As particles 
of placid water move imperceptibly in their relation 
with adhesion within the laws of motion, so will some 
little unnoticeable word or act yield some imper- 
ceptible feeling that will sooner or later be of some 
aid to other acts and deeds in shaping the character 
of the human mind. 

When the infant first opens its eyes to behold the 
world, its mind has no conception of the vision 
revealed. But day by day its each little act will grad- 
ually frame within the network of memory the 
character that will later proclaim its final destiny. 

Here the reader will permit this editorial to begin 
its mission with mothers who have infants to raise. 



JOHN L. MEANT 81 

And as the evils of life are too numerous to be men- 
tioned at one writing, the mother will this time only 
take into consideration the discussion of ''envy'' for 
the purpose of keeping it out of the heart of her child. 

But mothers and other readers may wish to ask why 
envy is the first evil impression to be guarded against. 
The answer is easy. And for the reason that it is a 
natural self -inherent propensity that needs but oppor- 
tunity to enkindle its flame. Besides, it is one of the 
seven deadly sins which knows no end of persecution. 
The whispers of good wishes may knock at its door 
with pleading inspirations of love, but it will still 
remain firm and endurate. It knows no forgiveness; 
it fears no danger. Conscience may condemn it. The 
pleadings of mercy may ever shadow its visions with 
clouds of love, and yet it will peep into the dimness 
of its pleasure with as much anxiety as before. In 
the halls of evil it takes the first chair of honor; in 
the chamber of malice it becomes the executioner of 
every execution, but in the hearts of hypocrites it is 
paid as the money-making manager of their entire 
business scheme. 

In this connection it may be then said that envy 
has no home in the heart of justice; no pillow for 
its head in the bed of peace, and no friends to appease 
its useless passions in minds that are filled with con- 
genial thoughts. Neither will it be permitted to 
mingle its activities with the feelings of the man 
who tries to make human nature nobler and better 
than it is. He who lives to make life a pathway 
of happiness to the world beyond, will ever detest 
the man who whispers something evil about the pros- 
perity of his neighbor. A well-wishing person is 
always satisfied with his own fortunes, even though 
they may be small. Never will it appear to him that 



82 EDITORIALS OF 

he should envy the man who has more of the goods 
of this world than he himself has. On the other 
hand, the man with envy in his heart will never be 
happy, no matter how rich he may be, unless he is 
deA'ising some scheme to keep his neighbor eternally 
poor. The verdure that grows on another man's 
lawn annoys him in the day and haunts him in the 
night. No matter where he goes, his hatred is always 
at home with the victim of his dislike. Old age may 
make him feeble and decrepit, and sickness may give 
him sorrow and pain, but the envy that he has in his 
heart will always remain with him, firm and persist- 
ent, until he draws his last breath. And, though the 
grave may seem to hide forever every part of his 
being, there will still remain w^ritten upon the pages 
of time the memories that envy could not take to his 
tomb. Death may seize the soul and force the body 
to decay, but the wrong that man has done in the 
lifetime of his ambition and health will never fade 
away from the minds of the people who were victims 
of his envy. 

From the description given of this dreadful invader 
of the human mind, some reader may find a solution 
of its perversity in some chamber of his o^^^l heart, 
and the mother who kisses her child with maternal 
love will learn, if she will try to think, that it is not 
any whiter than it has been pictured in this editorial. 
Yet it has, notAvithstanding the darkness of its fea- 
tures, some secret fascination that will make itself 
loved, even in the hearts of people who have 
sometimes honor and strength enough to hate and 
condemn it Avith thoughts and words that can not be 
here written. 



JOHN L. MEANY 83 



BRIGHT MINDS ARE OFTEN DECEIVED. 

It is almost impossible for a sane mind to concede 
that a portion of the refined world is susceptible to 
believe that the sale of intoxicating drinks is an evil 
to the world. Let us call reason into action and try to 
learn if there can possibly be any grounds or excuse 
for such a tendency in any rational mind of a 
matured age. 

To be sure we admit, without argument, that there 
are very many people who preach prohibition for 
political and self-serving purposes. But it is not to 
people of this class that we refer here ; because no 
one pays any attention to them, except those who get 
religion like saints of the Salvation Army. Men and 
women who live in respectable homes, and who have, 
in many instances, a very fine sense of feeling, are 
the people who come within the purview of this edito- 
rial. "What care we about Brother Jones in the pulpit, 
unless he preaches the Gospel as the Gospel is. We 
hear him, of course, but we see him in his true light, 
believing, in his hypocritical arrogance, that he is one 
of the men destined to free the world from sin. 

With this we leave Brother Jones, in company with 
the rest of his kind, and begin to reason out, if 
we can, why people of a better class and of a more 
refined conception, yield in opinion to his kind of 
doctrine. 

If the sale of beer and whiskey was a thing of 
recent origin, we might be able to overlook the mis- 
conception of people who ought to be more stable in 
their understanding of the commercial and moral 
rights of men. But since the sale of beverages of this 
kind has been a medium of commercial activity ever 



84 EDITORIALS OF 

since human industry began, it is plain that the pro- 
hibition party is actuated with a fanaticism that 
should be stemmed. Besides this fact, intoxicating 
drinks are wholesome, and sometimes very necessary 
stimulants for the preservation of health. Doctors 
prescribe good whiskey, in small doses, on some occa- 
sions ; and there is no doubt at all about beer being a 
very invigorating tonic in Southern countries. 

But the prohibition craze might have been origi- 
nally inspired by the acts of people who take doses 
of whiskey and beer too often and too large for their 
stomachs. 

If so, a little reasoning may prove that a well bal- 
anced mind would not permit itself to be actuated by 
any inspiration that would introduce itself without 
sane argumentative powers of persuasion. For in- 
stance, if a man of good sound sense should repeatedly 
say men die from eating too much meat, it would not, 
of course, follow that he would be inspired to believe 
that it is dangerous to eat meat. Neither would he 
go out and preach unto the world that laws should 
be made to prevent the sale of roast, poultry, and 
all kinds of steak. If he did, the world would say 
that he was out of his mind, just as it says that 
preachers of prohibition are insane. 

In this comparison, there can be no doubt about 
what people would say of the man who would try 
to prevent the sale of meat : The entire Avorld would, 
almost unanimously, pronounce him a fool, or some 
malicious jester, who was in pursuit of having some 
fun at the expense of some of his fellowmen. But it 
seems that the world is not so unanimously condemn- 
ing the effort that is made to prevent the sale of 
beer and whiskey. And it is because the world is not 



JOHN L. MEANY 85 

SO much of the same mind in this I'espect that we 
write this editorial. 

Now to the essence of our argument. 

Henry the Fifth said to the Earl of Westmoreland : 
'^Cousin, why do you persist in asking me, your king 
and friend, to keep necessary stimulants from the 
camps of our soldiers, when you knov7 that I have 
twice as many gluttons in my court as I have drunk- 
ards in my armyf 

'^Because, your Majesty," replied the Earl, ''I 
am afraid your victories may incite your soldiers to 
celebrate too much, and thereby becomie unmindful 
of the battles that are yet to be fought.'" 

Now the king laughed and said hurriedly: '^The 
soldiers who have fought our battles so well should 
be permitted in time of peace to forget the trouble 
of the future in their stimulated happy moments 
of the present hour. Let them take a Little, as the 
Bible says, ^for the stomach's sake.' " 

These human and God-like words of the English 
King, may throw some feeling into the hearts of 
those who are urging the people of the state to elect 
a governor w^ho might be disposed to deprive Amer- 
ican citizens of their right to sell, buy and drink, 
a little of the beverage which makes man forget the 
miseries of the past and the foresighted visions of 
the troubles that poor human nature is so prone to 
borrow from the future. 

There is yet another thing in his dead majesty's 
words ; and it is the pointed comparison which places 
the glutton and the drunkard within the considera- 
tion of a king in moments of moral retribution to 
the judgment he wished to reserve. He knew that 
his cousin, the Earl, had but very little concern for 
the commission of a deadly sin like that of gluttony. 



86 EDITORIALS OF 

And for the reason that it would only kill the soul, 
while that of getting too happy in an army tent might 
give the enemy a chance to kill the body, at a time 
when the spirits might be happy under the influ- 
ence of a drink or two. 

The Earl of Westmoreland was not, however, a 
bad man. He knew that gluttony was a very great 
sin; and that God would not be angry with poor 
worn-out soldiers who might take a little for the 
stomach's sake. His motive was to admonish his 
king and friend in matters which might affect his 
moral rights, while he passed over, without notice, 
that which might kill the souls of dissipated noble- 
men w^ho did what they pleased in his court. 

Unfortunately, we do not have to go back to the 
reign of Henry the Fifth in order to find people with 
minds like the Earl of Westmoreland.. We have 
thousands of them here in Texas, if they only had 
been born of the same blood that he was. Pride, 
covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy and sloth, 
though the seven deadly sins, are to those Westmore- 
lands of 1910, so insignificant when compared to 
the taking of a little beverage, which is supposed by 
some meddling preachers to be distilled and brewed 
in hell for some private purpose that the devil only 
knows. And yet, we must not call these Earls of 
the present century bad people, because they are only 
believing from inspirations instilled into them from 
the lips of hypocritical men, who have no other aim 
in view but the creation of some kind of a political 
evil that which might enable them to make money 
for themselves. 

How in heaven 's name can it be sinful to put some- 
thing into your stomach that has been created for 
the benefit of man? Oh God of Heaven and Earth 



JOHN L. MEANY 87 

and of all things, how long wilt thou permit thy 
divine gifts to be trodden upon by human hypocrisy 1 

The poor publican who struck his breast in con- 
demnation of his guilt felt justified, while the Phari- 
see, who thanked God that he was not like other 
men, went away with his soul in a worse condition 
than it was before he stood in the temple to boast 
in prayer to God for the things that he had done 
for him. 

Human nature is ever the same. Hypocrites will 
always feign devotion, while the true penitent and 
humble man will kneel down before God with a 
fervent hope of being pardoned for his sins. 

On the other hand, like the Pharisee, the Salvation 
Army boaster and the hypocritical preacher, will pro- 
claim in holy accents that they are Alti-Christi, 
destined like the Savior of the World to redeem 
mankind. 



A THOUGHT THAT IS NEEDED. 

It has been written somewhere that a man should 
be just before he is charitable. This, of course, has 
never been denied, and never will be by any person 
of an upright mind. Still it might be just to admit 
without argument that charity pleads more sweetly 
before the throne of God than does any other virtue 
bom in the human soul. Purity, indeed, is a white 
flower that buds to live in the vision of divinity itself. 
No taint of sin can shade into any other color but 
white, the untinged face of this virtue. To her God 
gives his choicest grace and his sweetest smile. The 
world may try to fade her colors and break the stem 
from which she buds, but he who holds her in the 



88 EDITORIALS OF 

very esteem of his love, will stem her pride with 
everlasting visions of divine thought. Yet this favored 
flower, blooming out from the divinity of Him who 
made heaven and earth and all other things, cannot 
speak with the same pleading power before the throne 
of mercy as can the little pale-faced queen who loves 
to live in the hearts of men and who tells us with 
lips of pride in humble accents that her earthly name 
is charity. 

Justice may say that he must exist though the 
heavens fall; and purity may blush us into shame 
with the vision of her divine worth; but charity can 
lift up her head and proudly say, ''My God, I am 
she whom thou hast created to live especially for 
yourself in the heart of man. It is I whom you sent 
out from the feeling of your own mercy to do mercy ; 
and it is I who now beg mercy from you for the soul 
of the man in whose heart I have lived so long, 
and who never refused me anything I begged from 
him." 



IT USED TO BE HONOR. 

It was said in olden times that the eye was an index 
to the mind. Today it is only considered as a medium 
of use. Men nowadays have but very little con- 
cern in the study of reading the mind through the 
eye. Character is not the ambition of the twentieth 
century. Little cares the man of no fineness of feeling 
about the high or low conceptive instincts of the man 
with whom he mingles in daily life so long as his 
commercial relations are satisfactory. The installa- 
tion of exalted ideals is no longer a process of mental 
conception. Noble intentions of heart have long since 



JOHN L. MEANY 89 

been superceded by hatched schemes of deception. 
Honor has long since lost her throne in the social 
shrine of worldly respect. Principle, though the 
oldest and greatest king of human worth, is now only 
a vision of past recollection. 

In the social and business parade of human acts, the 
father now will tell his child that money is the crown 
of human effort. And in this respect, though morally 
wrong, he is logically right. No matter what man was 
in the former ideals of mental worth, he, as a rule, 
must have money now before he is appreciated. In 
the circles of human pleasure, wealth has no equals 
in determining the value of a man 's company. Nature 
may have filled his soul with gifts which may have 
within themselves the power to make him happy, 
yet nature has no gifts to give, that will take the 
place of money in the hearts of those who never 
try to feel the divinely sweet and holy thoughts that 
fill the mind when nature speaks. Yes, thoughts 
which sometimes paint in the eyes of man a vividly 
inspiring picture of the heavely gems that nature 
sometimes hides from human view. 

0, would that all men have what some men feel ! 
For then would every man within himself perceive 
the invisible home of heavenly pleasure that God to 
nature gave. 



SENTIMENT MAY HAVE VARIOUS MEANINGS. 

The word love when uttered as a verb in the affirm- 
ative conveys to the object it governs an idea of 
sentiment that can have only one meaning if it comes 
from the heart. But if uttered by the lips only it 
may be susceptible to any meaning that construction 



90 EDITORIALS OF 

might give it. The man who speaks the sentiment of 
his heart when he says to some lady, ''I love you," 
means only what he says; but the man who utters 
the same sentence to another lady without meaning 
w^hat he says, may have left himself susceptible to 
any construction that the word may within himself 
convey. There are some men w^ho will sometimes say. 
''I love you/' for the purpose of flattering the lady 
to whom they speak. Again, there are other men who 
measure their accents in pronouncing a sentence of 
this kind to the ladies of their conversation for some 
selfish motive of their own. While there are still 
others w^ho Avill say they love without the slightest 
meaning or purpose. 

Now then, if we are right in these assertions, young 
women should study the conduct and anxieties of men 
before they listen to whispers which might be decep- 
tive. Man in the study room of his admiration is a 
creature of intellectual conclusions, while a woman 
in the same study submits herself without thinking 
to the sentiments of her heart. When woman speaks 
love to her sweetheart she utters her heart in her 
words, while man may be much more sincere to the 
girl of his affections when he hides all his love in his 
mind. With man, love is only incidental to his hap- 
piness; with woman, it makes everything else inci- 
dental to it. Life may give her millions of wealth 
and all the charms that nature and life can give, but 
her heart will never be satisfied in matters of affec- 
tion until she knows she is loved. 



JOHN L. MEANY 91 



THE WOLF THAT DEVOURS. 

The greater percentage of labor and capital would 
be friendly to one another if politics, bigotry and 
the unworthy labor leader could be kept from dis- 
turbing the united effort of those who are honestly 
endeavoring to roll the commercial wheel of life. 
The politician comes with promises that eventually 
serve no one but his henchmen and himself. The 
bigoted, ill-bred curr who happens through chance 
to get a million or two, is anxious to make himself 
conspicuous in the battles of some jury-packing, wit- 
ness-bribing corporation, at the expense of some of 
the same class of people of which he himself w^as 
born and bred; and the self-puffed up, ignorant, 
bribe-taking walking delegate, is a disturber of peace 
and the kind of a man that Judas was when he be- 
trayed our Lord. 

Of course we do not mean that all politicians, cor- 
porations and labor walking delegates should be con- 
demned in the language and words we have just writ- 
ten. But we do mean that union labor and men of 
toil, generally, are day after day humbugged, out- 
raged and betrayed by some politician, corporation or 
walking delegate of the classes above referred to in 
this editorial. And we do not hesitate to add that the 
inactiveness of labor unions is in many instances to 
blame for some of the advantages that have been taken 
of laboring men as a whole. We must, however, 
qualify this last assertion by saying that the 
inactiveness complained of is an innocent delusion 
that charity must excuse. Yet it might be dangerous 
to make this admission, lest it might encourage for- 
getfulness in the ranks of men who will never succeed 



92 EDITORIALS OF 

in getting the justice that is due them unless they 
awaken from slumbers which have for years left them 
in the hands of their own forgetfulness and a prey to 
the unscrupulous wolf that lives to devour. 



ONE SHOULD APPRECIATE THE OTHER. 

The relationship of labor and capital is as sacred 
as that of husband and wife; and as husband and 
wife are put asunder by misunderstandings that are 
averse to the betterment of the human family, so are 
labor and capital put apart by misconceptions that 
are injurious to commercial life. If woman under- 
stood her husband as she thought she did when she 
became his wife, he would have less trouble in admit- 
ting that she is by nature as susceptible as he himself 
is. In like manner, the capitalist would overlook some 
of the shortcomings of the laboring man if he would 
only see in himself the same soul and feelings tluit 
all men must alike possess in this common flesh and 
blood that Eve and Adam gave. As man should bow 
his stronger thoughts to the woman that makes him 
happy, so should the rich man bend his knee of foolish 
pride to the man that gives him a living percentage 
of profit upon every dollar he has. But as woman 
is, in turn, bound by her marriage vow to love, honor 
and obey the man whom she accepted to be her hus- 
band and protector through life, so should the laboring 
man be respectful and true to the man who gives him 
the money that buys the bread he eats. 

The similes here drawn do not, however, picture an 
exact comparison, because there is in married life a 
mystic tie which can only be explained by God, while 



JOHN L. MEANT 93 

that of the laboring man and capitalist is only a simple 
duty that the one owes to the other without ceremony. 
Yet the meaning of the similes remains the same in 
conclusion, because duty and obligation have, respect- 
ively, only one meaning in every expression of the 
human mind. And this is true in all instances, be- 
cause that which can not have any other meaning but 
what it has, will never be anything else but what it 
is in the conclusion that conception gives it. 

Man, then, in the field of labor must not assume 
that he can abuse the confidence placed in him by 
his employer. Neither must the employer imagine 
that he can command his employe beyond the limits 
of his endurance. As all men are the same in flesh 
and blood, so are all men the same in natural sensi- 
bilities. And as no man is of himself an independent 
factor of human life, it must naturally follow that 
all men are dependent on one another. Yet every 
man has a self-solvent existence that can not be 
ignored by any other creature of his kind. He who 
made the earth, the stars and all we can imagine or 
see, is the only being who has the right to discrimi- 
nate between the lesser and the greater of us. It is, 
therefore, wrong to crush by the sword that fortune 
gives, the right which every man might in himself 
conceive if human life could equal rights proclaim, 
where men can not be what they want, but what 
they are, and where the natural streams of usefulness 
would cease to flow if all men were just alike in all 
things. 



94 EDITORIALS OF 



FANATICISM AND GREED. 

Unfortunately, we have two extremes in Texas. 
On one side, some preachers and other fanatics are 
demanding state-wide prohibition; on the other, the 
liqnor men and their allies in the liquor market, are 
making a selfish and concentrated effort to run the 
politics of the state to suit themselves. This won't 
do. And yet it must do unless the fair-minded voters 
of Texas concentrate their efforts to run the state for 
the interest of the people. If the personnel of our 
state government should become actuated with the 
spirit of our preachers, we would have within a 
few years a condition of affairs too distressing to be 
even now thought of. Poverty, from depopulation 
and lack of business energy, would overtide our cities, 
our villages and our farmers alike. 

On the other hand, if some of our beer and whiskey 
merchants would have their oAvn way, our state would 
be pested with dives, drunken sots and red light re- 
sorts, and we would have again what we had before, 
certain sides of the streets of our cities where ladies 
would be ashamed to walk. 

Here we must reason closely and fairh^ if we desire 
to be just to all parties concerned. Fanaticism on 
one side and selfishness on the other, darken the 
pathways of righteousness to such an extent as to 
leave it sometimes difficult for the ordinary traveler 
to make his way through without getting side-tracked 
into the pathways of danger. We have people in 
every community who are anxious to walk in the right 
way. but their vision of right is often too weak to see 
through the delusory blindfold of the corrupt and 
the cunning. And it is for those that we are writing this 



JOHN L. MEANY 95 

editorial. But in writing thus, we must be permitted 
to say what we think, regardless of what others may 
think and say of us. The editor of a newspaper must 
become fearless before he can consistently say to the 
Avorld that he is desirous and able to become a teacher. 

We say this, because in this editorial we have to 
brave prohibition fanaticism, as well as low-down, 
ungodly greed. But so far as either is concerned, we 
are equal to the occasion. 

Here is to the platform upon which we stand ; and 
we assert now and forever what we said in our first 
issue, that the meddling preacher should have no voice 
in secular affairs, and that the brewer and liquor 
men who try, by their concentration of political power, 
to elect over the head of the citizen the candidate of 
their choice, is equally as dangerous to the community. 
The blindness and fanaticism of the one is in crime 
a counterpart of the other, inasmuch as both are pro- 
moters of the direst evils that could beset the progress 
and morals of the Texas people. Besides the meddling 
preacher and the manipulating political tyrant, should 
be, respectively, brought to their senses before the 
power of either one can become too great in the com- 
mercial and political issues of the people. 

From our conclusions in this respect, it must not 
be understood that we have in any way referred to 
the respectable ministers and liquor dealers of the 
state. On the contrary, we are hoping that preachers 
and liquor men of worth will unite in one continuous 
political effort for the common benefit of all. 



96 EDITORIALS OF 



ENERGY IN THE WRONG WAY. 

If the laboring man would assert himself as strongly 
in the political field as he does in the arena of con- 
tention for higher wages and less honrs, he would 
have the wages and the hours to suit himself. And 
this we say because any fair-minded legislature would 
do the fair thing for those who work in the heat and 
burden of the day. But the legislatures generally 
elected, through either the indolence or negligence 
of the laboring men, seldom care for the man in whom 
they see nothing but thanks. The poor man who runs 
for an office that pays about one-half his expenses 
while holding office has something of much more im- 
portance than the rights of the labor unions in his 
mind. Here is where the political study of the labor- 
ing man should begin; here is where his aim in life, 
should beget itself for him. 

But, unfortunately, the laboring man does not 
always realize the truthfulness of this expression. Any 
cunning politician will be nearly always able to blind 
his perception in this respect. And when the man 
of many promises gets to Austin and fails to keep 
even a single one, the laboring man is still blind 
because he does not care to trouble his mind with the 
study of things that would open his eyes. A paid 
or friendly write-up in some newspaper about the 
man he supported will still hold his friendship for 
that same man, notwithstanding that the cause of 
the write-up might be of much service to the enemy 
of union labor. 

Gentlemen of toil who may read this editorial and 
who have been fooled so long, may learn a little from 
its dictates, if they study the past acts of those whom 



JOHN L. MEANY 97 

they have been called upon to support in the future, 
and who may in the future make them the same prom- 
ises they made in the past. 

Talk is cheap; acts and deeds are the only things 
that will count for us either in this life or in the 
life to come. But the results from a game of poker, 
or any other game, at Austin or elsewhere, cannot be 
acts and deeds that w^ould do any one any good, except 
those whom such results would directly concern. 

A word to the wise. Open your eyes and pay no 
attention to the man who cares nothing for you when 
your vote is cast. 



HUMAN PROPENSITIES. 

The study of human propensities in commercial as 
well as in social life will benefit the student of that 
study with the result of a definite and pleasing profit. 
The man who thinks that his fellow man is not entitled 
to some consideration for the faults he may have has 
no respect for the propensities of nature. Neither 
will he ever learn to win the good will of people whose 
views of life differ from those of his. In the com- 
mercial world men are almost always anxious to take 
much and give little. In the social few natures are 
only found willing to think that the social features 
have, or ought to have, equal significance in the same 
field of society for all those who mingle there. 

But in answer to these assertions some might say, 
as some have often said before, that the selfishness of 
man is a propensity that must be in him in order 
that he may be able to make his way to the hills 
of success. Such answers, whenever given, are not 



98 EDITORIALS OF 

deductions of good reasoning. The merchant who 
thinks that his own interest should be his only ambi- 
tion is not a desirable citizen; neither will he make 
himself rich in the naked mercantile sphere of action. 
And this may be asserted even though it can be said 
that many selfish men have become very rich : for 
such may happen through circumstances that do not 
put the commercial wheel in motion for all men 
alike. In like manner, it may be said that the 
young man who thinks only of himself in the social 
world can never have the power and pleasing happi- 
ness of being loved by his associates. 

Those then who have not yet begiui to study the 
habits and wishes of those with whom they mingle in 
life, will begin to do something for themselves if 
they begin now; for in a very little while they will 
begin to see that they themselves have Yery many of 
the faults that have often appeared to them very 
blamable in some of their fellow men. 



THE WAGE EARNER IN HIS SOCIAL CON- 
DITION. 

The laboring classes are scarcely ever understood 
among those who become millionaires by chance. This 
happens because men who Avere once poor themselves 
fear that a kind word for their former kind would 
still keep them before the public in the society of 
those with whom they lived in their former, poverty". 
It is different with those who were always rich and 
well born. It never occurs to them that they are 
lowered in the estimation of their associates if seen 
in the company of men who are poor. Besides they 



JOHN L. MEANY 9d 

have no difficulty in seeing that there is often as 
much honor and principle in the man who earns his 
living by hard work as there is in the man who 
rides in the carriage that circumstances and fortune 
gave him. And in seeing thus, they do not see the 
man in the carriage without honor and principle, 
but merely see that he is in many instances no better 
than his fellow man in the wage earner's clothes. 

This, of course, is a philosophical vision that some 
rich men are scarcely ever able to see. And for the 
reason that honor and principle are born of the same 
instinct and never manifest to the soul of the man 
born w^ithout feelings of like instincts. As plain glass 
without the qualities of a mirror can hardly ever 
become a medium of reflection, so is a soul without 
honor and principle ever unable to conceive the 
thoughts of those who are actuated with noble feel- 
ings. But as the plain glass will in certain places 
before the rays of the sun feign the reflection of an 
object, so will ignoble feelings feign to be noble in 
the presence of those who inspire them with feelings 
of better thoughts. 

Why this difference in man is so plainly observable, 
is not here given us to discuss. Our aim in this edi- 
torial is to write upon the merits of a large percent- 
asce of men who are considered by certain rich men 
and by empty-minded aristocrats to be people worthy 
of consideration only in their own walk of life. To 
be sure, the working man, generally speaking, is not 
fitted on account of the circumstances of his position 
to mingle and mix with those who have a business 
standing and plenty of time and means for social 
and fastidious occasions. But, in many instances, 
many of them have brains and refinement sufficiently 
fitted to associate with, and take place in, societies 



100 EDITORIALS OF 

outside of their own walk and limited circles. It takes 
brains to be a mechanic. Railway coaches, household 
furniture and machinery of every kind, begot their 
beginning in the genius of minds that were able to 
define their usefulness. Put the man who builds a 
locomotive, a carriage or any other kind, or piece of 
machinery, against the grocer, the dry goods man, or 
any other merchant, and after the proper study and 
consideration he will appear to you just as big and 
as useful as either of them. 

Genius, industry and activity should be appreciated 
in the wage earner as well as in the manufacturer. 
And if his mind is of the same caliber he has a right 
to walk in the same sphere of life, provided, however, 
that he finds himself there with the proper decorum. 
Yet, notwithstanding this to be true, the wage earner 
should never wish to be with his equals in this respect, 
in places where money might proclaim them superior 
to him. The happiest man in society, is he who knows 
his place and keeps it. "While on the other hand, it 
can be asserted with much certainty that a rich man 's 
society is nearly always dangerous to a poor man. 
He who is continuously trying to handle things he 
cannot reach will always find himself below the level 
of his ambition. But he who plucks the flowers that 
bud within his own sphere will never find himself 
wishing to wear a rose too difficult for him to get. 
It is the attempting of leaping to heights which we 
cannot reach that generally keeps us below the level 
of our own social equals. The man who tries to be 
more high-toned than his fellow man in the same 
walk of life learns too late that all his fellow men 
make fun of his foolishness. 

Summing up the ideas of our efforts here made, it 
might not displease anyone if we say that the rich 



JOHN L. MEANY 101 

man would seek the society of the wage earner more 
often if he knew him better. Yet it is just as well 
that the rich and the poor, and the fairly well-to-do, 
should live socially in the spheres peculiar to their 
respective means. But to this we would like to add, 
that money does not make either brain, sinew or 
honor. These qualities and attributes must be born, 
cultured and matured in the mind, head and body 
before any man can say to himself that he has pos- 
sessed himself of those things that make him great 
and noble in the eyes and hearts of the better classes 
of mankind. 



AN IDLER IS A MENACE TO SOCIETY. 

The sphere of human life is a field of mental and 
manual action. He who lives to think there is nothing 
for him to do, lives to be a burden upon some per- 
son or persons of the human family. And this is true, 
even though such a man may be born of rich parents 
and have inherited a fortune large enough to main- 
tain him through life, without adding to it one dollar 
from the treasury of his own efforts. This asser- 
tion may not be supported by some of the readers 
of this editorial, and for the reason that it is an 
assertion which will not appeal to those who have no 
conception of human philosophy. There is, however, 
a sufficient number of people in every walk of life 
to make it worthy of the efforts here made. Even we 
think that it is not time lost to present this fact to 
the minds of those who have no taste for thoughts that 
may come from it. 

Premised thus, we assert again that the sphere of 
life is a field of mental and manual action. The rich 



102 EDITORIALS OF 

and poor, the wise and simple, have been born to 
work out their moral existence by some profession, 
business or calling. The farmer plows the field as 
monarch of the soil, the merchant sells his goods in 
the moving glories of competition; and the profes- 
sional man gets his living and honor from the fame 
that reputation gives him. But he who has no trade, 
profession or calling, is either a beggar, or some rich 
man, who makes it his daily aim to annoy his asso- 
ciates with idleness and sin. 

In this alternate, the beggar is a more desirable 
burden than the rich idler. All he does is to beg and 
get from whom he can, and few indeed will give him 
more than they can afford to part with, unless he is 
one of those beggars in black clothes, who takes money 
for the love of God, and who will, in the face of 
the charity he preaches, appropriate it to the selfish- 
ness of his own good will. This is, of course, human 
in the act of appropriation, but divine in the act of 
taking from the needy that w^hich charity has in- 
spired them to give. And, here, it may be added 
that beggars of this class will sometimes inject into 
their systems of pillage, a deception that will hide 
their object from the moral eye. For instance, when 
the pockets of charity are exhausted, they will preach 
necessity for the purpose of accomplishing their aim. 
The devil, they say, is at the head of something that 
is deeply rooted in the morals of their people, and 
ripe in itself to bring eternal destruction, unless there 
is something immediately done that will save the souls 
of those who are threatened. 

Yet, beggars of this class are not as dangerous to a 
community as are rich spendthrifts, w^ho have in- 
herited the money they squander. And it might even 
be added that the rich man, who lives idle on the 



JOHN L. MEANY 103 

interest of the money he has inherited, is doing the 
world an injury that cannot be too severely con- 
demned. In a word, he w^ho does not live by the 
proper exercise of either brain or sinew, is a creature 
too unholy to live in the society of men. 

But assertions of this kind, in the absence of a due 
course of reasoning, may be too dangerous for the 
reader who will not permit his own thoughts to de- 
velop proper conclusions. To say a thing, will not 
always prove the assertion of what is said to be true. 
The specific, as well as the general powers of the 
mind, must give the answer of the question before the 
deduction is properly made. To say, that a man is 
a thief, or that a certain thing should be so con- 
demned, is only an expression of a mind that may be 
deceived. Therefore, it is not wise to be persuaded 
into the believing or the doing of anything seriously 
concerning the public or ourselves, without first hav- 
ing placed before our minds the fact, or facts, which 
might lead a reasonable man into an action of a like 
nature. 

On the other hand, it is always well not to be too 
hasty in sealing the mind too tightly against an accu- 
sation which might have been made in good faith. 
It is in our opinion better to permit the conception 
of the soul to receive the information tendered and 
then lock it up in the chambess of thought for future 
reference. This, we advise, because a day may come 
when the treasure so stored may become useful in 
determining the truth or falsity of a question pre- 
sented at a time when the mind might not be ready 
to premise itself into a condition of being able to 
form the proper conclusion. 

But information thus carried in the mind should 
not be harbored with a view of making capital out of 



104 EDITORIALS OF 

it which may be contrary to the charity that men owe 
to one another. The idea here attempted to be con- 
veyed is, that men should only condemn the action 
and business of another when such action and busi- 
ness have been so apparently wrong, as to leave no 
doubt about the manner in which they should be 
condemned. 

AYe must, however, in spite of our charity in this 
respect, condemn in the strongest emphasis of accentu- 
ation, the depravity of the rich idler, who is of no 
earthly value to his fellowmen. 



FORTUNE SOMETIMES MAKES DISSIPATED 
IDLERS. 

Man's effort in the labor of competitive existence 
has a charm that makes him happy in the midst of 
his greatest difficulties. He who fights and wins in 
the war of any battle lives to learn that victory has 
brought to him a happiness which never comes to 
men who had no battle to fight. Life to those who 
inherit the name and wealth their parents had is but 
a dream that makes them feel in its ebbing hours 
how useless a life they live. The soul will always be 
happy in the exercise of feelings that appeal to its 
natural ambition. 

But take progressive anxiety from mental activity 
and you will turn the rippling emotions of the mind 
into the barren visions of sin, where they will die to 
live when the soul is dead to every hope that lighted 
her former existence. 

In this psychological view the reader will permit 
us to paint the picture of the dissipated idler who in- 



JOHN L. MEANY 105 

herited from his father the riches that make him what 
he is. At the breakfast table, a little before noon, he 
has no longer the exalted visions of his youth. Before, 
he ate to live, now, he lives to eat. The meat on his 
plate when he was young was good, now, it is bad. 
At midnight, or sometime before daylight, when he 
has eaten, had and drunk everything that mortal taste 
could wish or desire, he rolls into bed to think and 
dream of his ill-spent, miserable life. And then, 
after days, weeks, months and years have passed, his 
end comes and he dies in doubt of his salvation. 

On the other hand, take the willing young man 
who only gets a small fortune from his father and 
who tries daily to make his little mite more than it 
is, will eat his breakfast in the morning with a relish 
which makes him feel how healthy he is. At night, 
when his hard day's work is done, he will retire to 
sleep the blessed rest that will give him new ambi- 
tion in the morning. 

Here then it may be said that effort is, in the daily 
walks of human toil, a gem which has within itself 
the power to make man see within his heart how nobly 
proud it is to feel that he himself has made in life 
what life has given him to enjoy. 



REFINEMENT AND LOVE. 

Much time and thought is devoted and given to 
advance social refinement and individual culture. 
Nearly every lady and gentleman of any pretense at 
all has this aim at heart. And commendably so, 
because refinement and culture are very essential to 
the finer advantao'es of social interchange. Culture 



106 EDITORIALS OF 

alone will not, however, make man great nor woman 
charming. The man who did something that is really 
worthy of praise, has done something that will give 
him a friendly place in the minds of those who know 
him. But he who does neither good nor bad will 
never have very much value in the estimation of the 
people with whom he mingles, even though he may 
be a man of much refinement. In like manner, the 
woman who wears her beauty with culture seldom 
wins for herself a lasting thought in the minds of 
those with whom she mingles. True, beauty and good 
manners may lead her up to the highest pinnacle of 
social advantage. But even then she will not enjoy 
the happy pleasure of knowing that she is loved, 
unless she has those finer endearments of character 
which make woman nobly winning and pleasing. 

On the other side of this discussio, we may be per- 
mitted to say that some women have made their way 
to a very high sphere of happiness without having 
the advantage of either beauty or refinement. In mis 
respect, very little argument is needed to sustain the 
permitted assertion. Love is a shapeless thing — hav- 
ing existence only in the abstract. In fact it is a 
human feeling that we can neither see nor touch, but 
which makes itself felt and seen in every heart that 
possesses it. Without it, the soul is barren of its 
richest treasure: with it, it is rich enough to be 
happy in whatever sphere it may live. 

So much in this respect. But we have not yet said 
enough to exemplify our meaning. When woman has 
beauty, love and refinement, her worth is more than 
of human value : it is a measure of divine goodness 
that surpasses human conception in every deduction 
of thought. With love alone she becomes to man the 
measure of h(M- value; but when beautv and refine- 



JOHN L. MEANY 107 

ment are added, she inspires him with thoughts 
which are nearly divine. As the moon vies in sombre 
grandness the rough, dark face of the earth at night, 
so does woman, with beauty, love and culture, vie 
into gladness and fidelity the blackest conceptions of 
man. But as the fair, placid face of the moon fails, 
at sometimes in the darkness of night, to illume 
the earth with her light, so does a woman without 
love fail to brighten man's pathway in the darkness 
of his thoughts. And as the earth craves the pure, 
placid rays of the moon when the black clouds of 
night intercept her from it, so does man crave the 
pure, fond kisses of his wife when the crosses of life 
separate her from him. 



A POEM FOR THOUGHT. 

It is not always wise to paint 

Every fault that can be seen. 
Lest he who thinks himself the saint, 

May have himself some faults to screen. 

There is in every man we see, 

Some little love and good to show, 

If men would only let him be. 

When they pretend his faults to know. 

To speak the word that makes one sad 
Is not the word that lips should speak 

To those who might have been made glad, 
If men were not so false and weak. 



108 EDITORIALS OF 

HAPPINESS IN LOVE. 

On earth, in heaven, or anywhere. 
If I love I'll be happ}" there. 
Money is good and nice to have, 
And other things may bring delight; 
But love in my heart is enough for me, 
No matter with whom or where I be. 

True, true, indeed, I may have pain, 
And try to please myself in vain. 
Yet, nevertheless, I will endure, 
And be myself in spite of all. 
If heaven to my soul will give 
The pain of love for love to live. 



A POEM TO LIFE. 



Life, sweet in my thoughts, let me love you. 

No matter how little to me you may be; 
For ere in my heart I should hate you, 

I Avould rather be dead than with thee. 
In days that are gone, mother and you 

Were, to me, all that Heaven could give ; 
But mother in sorrow did leave you, 

With a hope that her child would still live. 
Since then in your pathways I traveled. 

The same as if mother remained, 
With hope that the mysteries unravelled 

Would be yet in a measure explained. 
You meet me some days with a frown, 

And again with a kiss you embrace. 



JOHN L. MEANY 109 

As you put all my sorrows to drown 

In dear hopes, that you whisper with grace. 

Still oft in my thoughts it seems strange 
That, dear, you should so stubborn be 

In matters which Heaven might otherwise change, 
If you, only, had mercy on me. 



INGRATITUDE. 



In looking at the world from the hills of thought 
we can readily perceive, with much regret, that most 
men are wont to forget what some of their fellow 
men have done for them. If man could be made to 
learn that ingratitude is the lowest ebb of degenera- 
tion he might be forced to see how wicked it is to 
forget good and do evil. Some people think that it 
is wisdom to have the faculty of being able to get, 
and forget, without giving anything. To such per- 
sons, there is no such a thing as being grateful. In 
their hearts they feel no throb of kindness or sin- 
cerity. They go to the friend, or friends, whom they 
have been able to deceive, and picture the necessity 
of their needs with w^ords that would do intellectual 
honor to the cunningness of the devil himself. Then 
when they have exhausted the friendship that can no 
longer endure, they wnll become either too proud or 
too poor to reciprocate. The cord that tied them to 
the friends they had pretended to love is cut just so 
soon as their obligations begin to peep out from the 
acts of the past. The friendship they had uttered in 
the days of their need becomes a humiliation of 
thought in the days of their prosperity. And above 
all, they will curse with impunity the man who dares 



110 EDITORIALS OF 

to say that they ever needed his friendship. To re- 
member a benefactor, is to them heathen philosophy ; 
to forget him, is the pride of their ambition. Try to 
teach them gratitude and they will laugh at your pre- 
sumption. Speak of some man whom you know was 
their friend, and they will tell you that he is a two- 
faced tattler, without either honor, worth, or prin- 
ciple. And they will add, if they think he has told 
3^ou of any of his relations with them, that every hair 
in his head has cost them dollars. 

In a word, the monster called ingratitude, is a 
deplorable beast of human depravity, blinding with 
the mist of greed the purest sentiment of human 
inspiration. As the angry waves put to naught the 
rippling murmurings of its would-be placid waters, 
so does the ungrateful man destroy the kindness that 
would otherwise kiss into accents of good fellow- 
ship the charity with which God has endowed every 
human soul. 



LOW CONCEPTIONS. 



A man of low conceptions is always more or less 
apt to instill his own thoughts into the minds of his 
associates. Environment, in nine cases out of ten, 
makes everything within its sphere susceptible to it. 
As the chiM gets its infant habits in the cradle in 
which it is raised, so will man learn to get the inspi- 
rations of his wishes from those with whom he min- 
gles in daily life. No matter how nobly matured a 
mind may be it will yield to temptations that nature 
is unable to resist. True, that there are men who can 
long endure the persecution of evil whispers, but in 
time the resisting power of their souls will give up 



JOHN L. ME ANY 111 

to the painted pleasures of natural fancy. As heat 
will turn ice into the water of which it was made, so 
will environment convert into waters of sin the very 
highest aspirations of the soul. 

Man then should not permit himself to mingle per- 
sistently with and amidst men who try to make the 
world daily more wicked than it is. Nay, more than 
wicked. There are people in the world today who 
would like to consume within the sphere of their own 
sinful reach every feeling that God has given to the 
human heart. Yes, and who would destroy, if they 
could, every picture that virtue has painted within 
the visions of the soul. 



JEALOUSY AT HOME AND LOVE FOR ABROAD. 

The indifference of man to man is almost the 
meanest propensity of human nature. Nearly every 
person is more or less anxious to receive the assist 
ance of his neighbor; but few, very few indeed, are 
willing to respond in the same manner they would 
be willing to receive. 

This is man's narrow-mindedness to the detriment 
of his own welfare. If he only would permit him- 
self to think that he is a creature of divine intend- 
ment, placed in existence to be faithful to himself 
in the multiplicity of his kind he would be s^reat^r 
and more noble in his general personnel. The erocer 
at the comer would be anxious to help the clothier 
in the next block, and the farmer Avould desire the 
welfare of the merchant just the same as he would 
his own. Under this spirit of feeling, home indus- 
try would be patronized. The dIow made in one's 



112 EDITORIALS OF 

own city would be equally as good as that made 
two hundred miles away; and the beef raised in the 
field that is near would be equally as nourishing and 
as delicious as that which has come from afar. 

But unfortunately this is not human in its pres- 
ent selfishness and deceit. The merchant will often 
patronize the importer instead of the farmer who 
lives near to him, and the farmer, in turn, will some- 
time believe that he can do better in purchasing his 
implements from some foreign industry. 

Yet these are not the most serious instances of 
local near-sightedness. We have here at home people 
of every business and class who are anxious to run 
down the commercial value of commodities manufac- 
tured and sold within a few minutes' walk of their 
own fireside and by merchants, manufacturers and 
business men, who aid them with money and other 
valuable assistance in their daily transaction of life. 
To hear a man say that an article of furniture 
made in Houston is not as valuable for the same 
money as an article of its kind sold in New York 
or Chicago, is an everyday evidence of man's for- 
getfulness to the city and to the citizens where he 
lives and of which he is one. Even readers of this 
editorial will not appreciate the effort in it put forth 
in the same manner and to the same extent that 
they would if it had been published in a Northern 
magazine. Everything must come from afar before 
it is appreciated. As the poet is condemned at home 
and admired abroad, so is the workmanship of a 
factory, respectively, condemned and appreciated. 
Travel where you will, observe as you may and you 
will find this statement of facts to be true. The 
workings of the human mind are the same every- 
wher(» and have been throuo'h all time within the life 



JOHN L. MEANY 113 

of man. Jealousy at home and love for abroad are 
the two sealing impediments in the way of local 
industry. The , one, has a kind of a hidden hatred 
for the man who lives near by; the other is a half 
ill-bred insanity, born in the vain boast of minds that 
are attempting to explain problems too difficult and 
too useless to learn. 

Having premised ourselves thus, it will not be hard 
to picture how citizens of any city may make that 
city great. But, of course, we da not mean by this 
that the co-operation ; unitedly, by all the citizens of 
every city would make all cities wealthy, great and 
artistic; because if we attempted to advance such an 
idea, we might as well try to say that men and things 
of the same kind should be of the same size, appear- 
ance, structure and weight. But we do mean that 
every city could be made greater in a comparative 
degree if all its citizens would co-operate in advanc- 
ing their city in a united way. For instance, let 
us take our own city and begin to study what might 
have been done that has not been done if all were 
commercial friends. For then, the tailor, the grocer, 
the banker, the brewer and the dry goods man, to- 
gether with all other classes of merchants, would 
feel, severally, that the business of one is as impor- 
tant as the business of another, and that none should, 
in justice to all, expect to get from one a patronage 
that he would not to each one give in the mercantile 
exchange of business relations. 



WIFE, HOME AND LOVE. 

When gas was first invented men were selfish 
enough to feel that thev had done somethino' for 



114 EDITORIALS OF 

themselves. But since gas has become a kitchen 
agent, women have learned that men have uncon- 
sciously done something for them. Years ago the 
housewife slaved in the kitchen while her husband 
thought she was at home in ease and in happiness. 
Never did it occur to him that she had to cook three 
meals a day in a hot room, which had to be heated 
by the fires she made with her own hands. This, of 
course, was not much to the man who did not stop to 
think how hard it sometimes was to build fires out 
of wood, coal and other fuel materials, and then 
endure, for hours at a time, the continuous heat that 
emitted from them; which heat, fatigue and other 
burdens left often, if not always, the poor housewife 
without either relish or energy to eat her meals. In 
fact, her only pleasure was to sit at the table and see 
her husband and other members of the family eat 
heartily what she had, in hardship cooked, but which 
she cooked because she loved to do something for her 
husband -and children. 

For years, years and hundreds of years, the hus- 
band looked on without caring to notice the slavery 
of his wife. And we suppose he would continue to 
look on forever, in this indolent and selfish manner, 
if Providence had not inspired someone of the more 
ingenius and more kind of us to think of the gas 
stove. 

But this little happiness which the housewife is 
receiving from the gas stove is somewhat marred by 
the chibhouse lie, the s^'ck friend story and the 
treachery of the midnight home-comer. To make 
woman really happy you must give her love. This 
feeling in her heart is as persistent as water flowing 
to the level of its own height. The world may give 
her money, friends, honor and everything else it has, 



JOHN L. MEANY 115 

and yet she feels that she means nothing to herself 
unless she knows she is loved. 

This is woman in every clime, age and sphere, 
regardless of what, to the contrary, may be said of 
her. She has faults to be sure, but if man would 
love her as he should the home might be made much 
more happy than it often is ; and many of the sorrows 
and troubles of the husband would vanish in the 
depth and purity of the love he would see in her for 
him. 



iUN 1 i9ii 



U\' t 



One copy del. to Cat. Div. 



)UN 9 19fl 




Tm 



■AH 















